Membership and Contribution Imports

CiviMember and CiviContribute imports give the option of using External IDs and Internal IDs instead of matching to first and last name. This is a more accurate way of importing especially if you have contacts that might have the same name.

External IDs can be used to keep track of member numbers or other unique indentifiers for your contacts. It's a good idea to create External IDs even if you don't already have them so that importing will be smoother.

To create and import External IDs:

1. Export your contacts from CiviCRM with Internal Contact ID, First Name, and Last Name.
2. Make an External ID column and use Excel's Autofill feature to create IDs. Format of field doesn't matter.
3. Complete a Contact import using the Update option when importing within CiviCRM.

To import membership and contribution data and connect them to contacts that you've imported already, you can use Excel's VLOOKUP formula to connect the ID's.

1. Export your contacts from CiviCRM with External ID, Internal Contact ID, First Name, and Last Name. Rearrange the columns in your spreadsheet so that External ID is the first column. Sort in ascending order by External ID.
2. Save the spreadsheet in Excel format.
3. Make a new tab in that spreadsheet and copy in your membership or contribution data. Also place the External ID in the first column. Sort in ascending order by External ID.
4. In your membership or contribution data tab, insert another column for Internal Contact ID. This is where the VLOOKUP formula will go.
5. In the first row of that column, click the "fx" icon in the formula bar and search for VLOOKUP.

• For Lookup_value, enter the cell that holds the External ID on your membership or contribution tab
• For Table_array, select all the data and column headers on your contacts tab
• For Col_index_num, enter the column number for the column in the contacts tab that contains your Internal Contact IDs

Then, you can import your membership or contribution data and connect it with the Internal Contact ID.

See our sample CiviCRM spreadsheet for typical columns used when importing.