1. Prepare file for import
Presumably, personal data of members/clients etc. is in your old software. It is crucial you make a good export from this software. Remember to properly check the export with a spreadsheet program, such as MS Excel. A free spreadsheet program is Calc, which is part of LibreOffice. You can download Calc here.
Export the file with personal data to your computer
- Usually, you can use functions such as ‘export’ or ‘save as’ to do this.
- Choose a supported file format (see part 3, step 5).
Check whether the file is exported correctly
- Use a spreadsheet program like MS Excel. A free spreadsheet program is Calc, which is part of LibreOffice. You can download Calc here.
- Work with only one tab. A spreadsheet with more than one tab is not supported.
- If you have several tabs and/or you want to import several object types (for example members and organization), make sure you create separate files for each list. For example a file for members – members.xls, and a file for companies – companies.xls.
Provide the file with titles
- Make sure that every first field of a column contains a title for the underlying content (for example ‘Name’, ‘E-mail’, ‘Address’, etc.).
- Use the first row in the spreadsheet for the titles. You might need to add an extra row to do this.
- The title should match the name of the corresponding field (whether created or yet to create) in the Organization (see part 2 – Configure Genkgo Organization)
Delete the following special characters
- Returns
- You can easily find and replace these with the ‘Find and replace all’ function in MS Excel or LibreOffice Calc.
- Search returns with Alt+010 and replace with a space.
- Quotation marks, tabs, commas, semicolons
- You can use the ‘Find and replace all’ function to find all instances of these characters and replace them with e.g. a hyphen (–) or space.
- Learn how to search and replace in MS Excel
- Learn how to search and replace in LibreOffice Calc
Save the file in the correct format
- Accepted formats are *.xls, *.xlsx, *.ods, and *.csv (comma separated value in Unicode or UTF-8 layout).
- Other formats are not accepted.