Create a Data Extension in Email Studio

A data extension is a table that contains data that you provide. Use data extensions to hold customer data, track loyalty points, collect tracking and usage data, and many more use cases that require you to store information in a table.

• Manage Policies for an Email Studio Data Extension
  If you have this feature enabled in Email Studio, the admin user for your account can allow or disallow users to delete a data extension, modify existing fields in a data extension, or add more fields to a data extension. Even if a user’s permission allows them to delete or update data extensions, the change control policy takes precedence over their permissions. If all users permissions for the account are set to deny for deleting data extension and deny for updating a data extension, the change control policy doesn’t need to be configured. Contact your account administrator if you would like to activate this feature.

Step 1: Specify the Data Extension Properties

Note A data extension field name can include only alphanumeric characters, spaces, dashes, underscores, and periods.

1. In Email Studio, select Subscribers | Data Extensions.
2. Click Create.
3. Select Standard Data Extension.
4. On the Properties page, for Creation Method, select Create from New.
5. Specify the properties of the data extension.
   1. Enter a name for the data extension.
   2. Enter a unique external key to identify the data extension.
      If you don’t specify an external key, a unique key is created for you. You use this key to refer to the data extension in API calls, AMPscript functions, and SSJS functions.
   3. Enter a description of the data extension.
   4. For Location, choose a folder to store the data extension in.
   5. To make the data extension eligible for message sends, select Is Sendable.
   6. To make the data extension eligible for test sends, select Is Testable.
6. Click Next.

Step 3: Define the Fields

Note A data extension field name can include only alphanumeric characters, spaces, dashes, underscores, and periods.

1. In the Name column, enter a unique name for the field in the data extension.
2. Select the type of data that the field contains.

   Text	A string of text that can contain letters, numbers, and spaces.
   Number	An integer.
   Date	A system date. Times are stored in Central Standard Time. Dates are stored in the format MM/DD/YYYY.
   Boolean	A true or false value.
   EmailAddress	An email address. This field must be present to send an email to the data extension.
   Phone	A phone number. Characters that aren’t digits are removed.
   Decimal	A number with a decimal point. You must specify two Length properties for decimal values. The first property is the total length of the value, and the second is the number of digits that follow the decimal point. For example, if you set the Length value to 7,2, the number 12345.67 is valid, but 987654.321 isn’t.
   Locale	A locale code. For a list of accepted values, see Valid Locales for Data Extension Sends.

3. For Length, enter the maximum number of characters that the field can contain.
   You can specify a maximum length only for the Text and Decimal data types.
4. To use the value of the field to identify unique records, select Primary Key.
   Primary key values can't exceed 850 characters. Each primary key value in the data extension must be unique. After you create a data extension, you can’t modify the primary key fields. We suggest including no more than 3 columns as primary keys.
5. To require the field to contain a value, select Nullable.
6. To use a default value for the field if none is provided, enter the value in Default Value.
7. To encrypt the contents of the field, select Encrypt Field.

   This option is available only for accounts with field-level encryption enabled. For more information about field-level encryption, contact your account executive.

8. Repeat these steps for each field that you want to add to the data extension.
9. If the data extension is sendable, specify how the data in the data extension is related to subscriber data.
   1. Next to Send Relationship, from the left dropdown menu, select a data extension field that corresponds to a subscriber value.
   2. From the dropdown menu on the right, select whether the field corresponds to the subscriber key or the subscriber ID.
10. Click Create.