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Importing Companies and Contacts from a CSV file

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If you output contact information using, for instance, Outlook you will generate a CSV file that has a flat database structure. This is unsuitable for importing data into OfficeTalk if you intend to associate contacts with company records.

Before you import the data into OfficeTalk, you will first need to normalise the data in the CSV file. This essentially means separating the companies and contacts and removing any duplicates. If, for example, you have the following:

First Name Last Name Company Name Company Address L1 Company Address L2
Florence Jennings Villefarno 43 Hammersoft Road Bakerstreet
Mike Jordan Nossafi 54 Pineapple Close Horncroft
Sam Owen Villefarno 42 Hammersoft Road Bakerstreet
Gill Trevithick Sanboke 12 Linal Street Oldbury

You will need to put all of the company specific information into a single file such as below:

Company Name Company Address L1 Company Address L2
Villefarno 43 Hammersoft Road Bakerstreet
Nossafi 54 Pineapple Close Horncroft
Villefarno 42 Hammersoft Road Bakerstreet
Sanboke 12 Linal Street Oldbury

You can do this by copying the rows in Excel, or your choice of spreadsheet program, and then pasting them into a new document. You will need to decide which data relates to a company and which data relates to a contact, with some data, there is some ambiguity such as telephone number: Is this the telephone number for the company or the contact? but you will need to make this decision.

After the company fields have been isolated, you will need to sort them by name and remove the duplicates.

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