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Importing Customer, Reservation or Transaction Data
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| 1. Select a file. You can enter the entire path to the import file, or use the Browse button. When browsing, it will look for .csv and .txt files by default, but you can change the file type to show all files if needed.
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| 2. Select the file format. Select either comma-separated or tab-delimited. Don't worry if you get it wrong -- the data will obviously look wrong when you import it if you choose wrong, and you can simply change this selection and do the Import again.
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| 3. Load the file for preview. Click the Load Import File button to read the data. The data is not actually added to your database yet, it's just loaded in the list on the dialog for previewing and editing.
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| 4. Define fields to import. If the file loaded successfully you should see the data in nice columns in the table. If the import file had headers in it, you'll even see the headers in the first line, like "first name", "last name", "city", etc. Now comes the important part -- you have to decide what each column means, in terms of Campground Master fields. This is usually pretty easy to do. Just right-click on each field (either the header or the actual data), and then select the field that corresponds to that column. Customer, Reservation and Transaction fields are listed separately, and there is also a separate list for Site Preferences (primarily used for preferences that might affect the charges, like 50A service). The column header will then change to that name so you know you've defined it. You don't have to assign fields to each column -- just skip any that you don't need or don't have corresponding fields. If you make a mistake, use the Remove function on the right-click menu. See the notes below for more details.
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| 5. Select fields to use for duplicate-removal. When the data is imported, duplicate customers will be automatically removed if possible. This not only applies to data you're importing, but also to any customers already in your database (it won't remove duplicates from your database, but it will avoid importing duplicates.) This requires at least a Last name and First name field (the data isn't much use without those anyway). You can also choose to check the Zip code field and/or the Address line 1 fields, to avoid filtering out common names like John Smith unless they live at the same place. If you uncheck these fields, or if they're not available in the imported data, then it will assume any that match first and last names are duplicates.
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| 6. Convert names/addresses to mixed case or upper case. Other programs may force or suggest that customer information be all upper case, which is easier to enter but is not as professional looking on receipts, and also takes up more room so less information can be shown on the Rack before it has to be truncated. So you may want to decide to start entering the information in mixed-case, and you can also have the import function convert the old information. Conversely, you can make sure that all of the old information is in upper case if you wish to keep with that procedure. Note that this only affects the data during this session, not data already entered or previously imported into Campground Master.
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| 7. Edit data if needed. The preview list is fully editable, so you can delete any records that you don't want to import (like obvious duplicates or blank records), and you can even enter corrections as needed here before importing. Just click on a field to select it and start typing to replace it, or click twice to edit the value without replacing it. Likewise, just click any field on a row and click the Delete button to delete the record. (Ctrl-click for multiple selection also works.) Note that it the import file included a header row, you should also delete that row so you don't get a customer that's just a header.
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| 8. Import the data. When everything looks right, click the Import Data! button to perform the import. You may see an error or warning prompt about duplicate filtering or field definitions if there seems to be something missing. As the data is imported, you will see customer/reservation totals and a duplicate total count up at the bottom.
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| When the import is complete, all records imported are removed from the list, but there may be some records left over in the list and a message saying that some errors were detected. To see why a record was not imported, just hold the mouse over the record in the list -- an error message will be shown with the reason for the error. Errors are typically a result of records that don't have a last name (required by Campground Master), or for sites that weren't recognized (if importing reservations), or dates that were not formatted properly. You can ignore them and close the dialog, or you can manually edit the records and run the Import again, as many times as needed to get them all imported.
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