You need to go to the field settings for Field A and set it to unique. Only then can it be used as a custom merge field for CSV imports.
It's also a good idea to check the box to check all current values are actually unique.
Gary,
You probably found my issue. Unfortunately, I also just realized I have some non-unique records in that field. I have several thousand records so trying to figure out the exact culprits might take me a minute. Hopefully once I resolve the non-unique issue, I'll be able to proceed with your solution.
Thanks.
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Aaron B
ab1692@att.com
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My preferred way to quickly check duplicates is to dump the CSV into Excel and use the formula below. A:A should be the column with potential duplicates, and A1 should be your first row of data in the same column.
=COUNTIF(A:A,A1)
The result will show how many instances of duplicates each value has. You can then filter the list to show all values that are not "1" to see your dupes. I prefer using this over (or before) Excel's "remove duplicates" because it shows you the dupes first in case you wanted to review.
Wow! That excel tip you provided just helped me uncover something we weren't aware of. This .csv was supposedly a list of "Unique" identifiers in the column but with the thousands of entries, nobody realized there were dozens of duplicates.
Thanks so much for that additional suggestion.
Once I get that problem fixed, I'll be able to get back into fixing my original issue.
v/r....Aaron
A quick update on the custom merge field issue......I could not get that field to show up by changing the property to 'unique'. I had to also make it the 'key' field for that table. Once I did that, I was able to select it as the merge field.
Regardless, your suggestion brought me to a working solution. Thanks.
Is Field A a formula field? The merge should be able to work on any unique field (not just a key), but I believe if it is a formula field it will not work. Glad you found a solution!
Hi Mike,
Thanks for reading and asking.
The field was not a formula field. It was a simple text field.
Although I have found a solution for my .csv upload, I'm still going to go back and try to get it to work without it being a "key field", just to see if I can figure out what the issue was.
Thanks again...Aaron
