Importing Contacts CSV not working pleas help

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I am brand new to AC. I have come across form InfusionSoft as I hate that with vengeance but I have made a very poor start with AC (my great white hope!) And iin truth, support have fallen well short of what InfusionSoft provide. They are being so very, very, very slow, and I don’t even have direct support access from my Dashboard, so I am hoping that someone here might help me through my frustration.

I though the sensible thing to do was to set up a list in AC, setup all my custom fields and then add one contact that has ALL the fields populated. Then to EXPORT that contact as a CSV file and use that CSV file as a template for the list of 596 contacts I wish to import.

One of the custom fields (Interests) is a set of checkboxes with possible Interests of the Contacts. The AC Exported CSV file has each Interest checkbox separate by || so I ensured that all the contacts are.

In short the file does not import correctly, it was missing ONE contact but didn’t say which one in the next to useless Import Report and now, even though I am constantly deleting ALL the imported contacts ready to try yet again, it won’t even import the ‘601’ contacts it is now finds in the csv file. It just says 601 Not Imported (Existing Contacts NOT Updated) There are no existing contacts as the list says ZERO contacts…I have deleted them all!

Another HOUR wasted this morning trying to get this working and trying to get a response from support. That’s ANOTHER hour I am unable to charge for!

I am properly gutted as AC really did promise to be THE better alternative to InfusionSoft.

Help!

2

Hello,

I understand that importing CSVs can certainly be frustrating. I’ve learned this the hard way myself. Unfortunately there are many things that can go wrong when importing a CSV file. I sincerely apologize if we’ve been slow to respond. We have quite a few team members out for the holidays and this does have a negative impact on our response times.

Firstly, it’s important to make sure that the file is strictly UTF-8 formatted. Secondly, it can really help to have the fields in your CSV quote encapsulated (surrounded by double quotes, following instructions like this: ). These two steps will ensure that there aren’t any special characters breaking the import process.

Another common mistake is that if you are importing contacts that are already in the system and you don’t select a List, the system will not import these contacts. This can be resolved by simply selecting a list whenever you run an import, even if you just create a “Temporary List” for this purpose.

Beyond this, I’d love to try and help troubleshoot your specific case. I see you’ve already emailed us at help@activecampaign.com, so I’ll jump on that case now.

Lastly, here are a few helpful resources to provide additional information about the import process:

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