After upgradeing to AR 9.0 I exported the customer data because a number of current customers were showing up as inactive and I thought this would be the quickest way to fix it. I had used the export and import for changing tax groups for HST and it worked without a hitch. This time when I imported the data and number of the customer names were lost. That is the customer name is blank now. Any ideas what I did wrong or if it is a glitch how I can fix it other than going through and reentering the customer names manually.

Hi Sammy,

In the import template used to update your customers, did you include the customer name in the Selected fields list? If so, and the 'mapped' column in the import file was blank, or the column in Excel was hidden or the width set to be very small, then this could have overwritten the name.

For the future, the correct way to update customers using the import process is to use 'fillers' to skip any information in the import file that you don't want to use, and just select the fields you want to update (say customer number and tax group/status in this case).

Also, make a backup of your data prior to importing changes, so that if unexpected results occur, you have a good copy of the data available for restoring.

To correct the customers that have blank customer names without individually editing them, you could do a smartfinder search to look for all customers where the name is blank, and then use the Excel Direct button to send this to an Excel sheet. Then edit the Excel file to enter in the names, and then re-import this list to update the customers. Here, only have two columns in the Excel file - customer number and name - and the import template should only have the same two selected fields. Also ensure that on the first tab, you do not have the 'add new records' checkbox selected, so that you can choose just the minimum fields to work with.

Yes I included the customer name because that was the only way we could tell if we wanted the customer active or not. The exact same columns were selected on export as on import and no columns were hidden. The customers names show properly on the Excel spreadsheet. I understand using as few items for exporting and importing as possible, which is why we are fixing things one by one rather than doing everything at the same time on the same spreadsheet. Something else must have caused the dropping of some names. Thankfully a lot of customer names are still there, but it is more than a few that were dropped.

I have tried importing just the customer numbers and names and still a few dozen come up blank even though they appear on the excel worksheet. There must be something else that is causing this. I do not understand the comment about not checking the "add new records", as you say that you can choose just the minimum fields to work with. Would "add new records" mean adding new customers?

Are the names blank on the Grid or on the record itself? Do you have the customer grid open when you are doing the import? You can choose whether inactive customers are displayed on the grid by an option on the grid column editor.

The customer name is blank both on the grid and on the record. I was hoping it was only on the grid, but no such luck.