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Hello, has anyone done data import before? From File menu -> Import -> From File... -> Updating existing prospects -> CSV file
Fields like Address, Business Address, etc allow multiple lines, the documentation says using Paragraph Mark to separate lines. I am pulling data from Oracle database, I tried chr(10), chr(11), chr(12), chr(13) and chr(46). Chr(10) and Chr(13) cause carriage return and you can see separate lines in the address field when viewing CSV files, but at the last step of the Researcher's Edge import, chr(10) and chr(13) messed up the layout of the records.
Does anyone know which ascii character(s) I should use as paragraph mark to make the import work? I would appreciate your help. Meanwhile, I will try and contact Blackbaud's technical staff too about this. I will let everyone know what I find out too.
I know this is a blackbaud user society. Hope I am posting my message at the right place. Is there a technical support forum? I just started my new job, I am new to Blackbaud products.
When I'm updating/importing addresses, RE needs this to deliminate where the carriage return is in the address lines field:
/n
Yep, that's it. 2 characters, in plain text at the point where a carriage return needs to be. Doesn't need to be an odd ASCII character, just a plain text "/n"
I tried "/n", "\n", with or without spaces around those 2 characters. But after import, the address is just one line with those 2 characters in the middle. They didn't cause carriage return.....Did I do anything wrong? Here is a sample record in my import CSV file:
It looks alright to me - doesn't need the space between the /n and the A122, but it looks like it should work for me.
Have a look at the import guide, located in the Blackbaud help from within RE itself. That may assist. I do see that there is a considerable note regarding importing org relationship addresses on page 163 of the import guide.
I've just checked one of my most recent imports, and it is the same as yours, albeit for a primary address.
ie:
"ConsID","AddrImpID","AddrLines","AddrCity"
"1234","123456789","123 Smith Street /nVia Smithview Way South","Smithfield"
Hey Rob, I called the blackbaud customer support line and found out that "/n" is for Raiser's Edge import. For Researcher's Edge, you can manually insert a paragraph mark in a text editor like notepad, wordpad, etc. by holding Alt key, then type 20 from the number key pad from the right side of the keyboard, the symbol will show up after you release the Alt key.
I thought I could find out the ascii equivalent and then generate it using sql. But unfortunately I found out that paragraph mark is a graphic symbol in IBM PC Extended Character Set (ECS). It also says 'Unfortunately, this ANSI character set is incompatible with the ECS character set used by DOS.' I created a case on the blackbaud support website and waiting for their response. I hope they can make TRE works the same way as Raiser's Edge. Otherwise, I need to use some odd character as a placeholder when using sql to generate the csv file, then need to ask my user to replace it with alt20 before they do the import.....which is the last solution I want to use.
Thanks for your help. I will let you and everyone know when I find out more.
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