What Is Imported for Business Accounts and Contacts?

Matching by Name and Site

If you are matching contacts by name and business accounts by name and site (which are the recommended options), the Data Import Wizard creates a business account for each unique business account name and site in the import file. It also creates a separate contact for each contact name listed in the file. The contacts are then associated with the appropriate business accounts.

If the business account or contact exists in the system, and you have read/write access to the record, the wizard adds your import data to the existing data in Salesforce.

Matching by Salesforce ID

You can also choose to match contacts and business accounts by Salesforce ID. With this option, the Salesforce ID is the criteria for de-duplication. That is, if you are matching by ID and a record in your source file has the same ID as a record in Salesforce, that record is updated in Salesforce. Record IDs are case-sensitive and must match exactly.

Matching by External ID

An external ID is a custom field that has the External ID attribute, meaning that it contains unique record identifiers from a system outside of Salesforce. When you select this option, the Data Import Wizard detects existing records in Salesforce with external IDs that match those values in the import file.

• This operation isn’t case-sensitive. For example, “ABC” is matched with “abc”. However, if the external ID field also has the case-sensitive Unique attribute, matching by external ID does not consider uppercase and lowercase letters identical.
• External IDs can be of type text, number, email, or auto-number. If the external ID type is auto-number, it isn’t available for matching, but you can use it to look up the parent record if it contains the external ID.
• Standardize External ID values before performing the import to prevent unintended matches.
• Multiple records with the same External ID within a file aren’t uploaded.
• Multiple external ID fields can find matching records in Salesforce when you use the Data Import Wizard.
• Only unique External ID fields are available to match by.

Overwriting Existing Account Values

The wizard never overwrites your existing business account fields unless you select Overwrite existing account values. This option lets you insert or update existing business account fields with new data. However, you cannot use this option to update existing field data with blank values. If you do not select this option, the wizard updates the empty business account fields, but does not touch fields with data.

If you do not have read/write access to an existing business account or contact, the wizards create a new business account or contact owned by you. In addition, the wizards create new business accounts and contacts based on specific fields in your import file.

In Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Performance, and Developer Edition orgs, the import wizards can also import new business account and contact notes. The wizards do not import notes that are exact duplicates of existing contact or business account notes.

To import account or contact notes, make the owner field in the imported file the Salesforce ID.