Contact and Lead Imports

The Basic Data Import is for importing new contacts or leads only. Ask your Salesforce admin to turn on the Basic Data Import in Salesforce, which is available in Enterprise and Performance editions. Then, if you have the View Setup and Configuration permission plus permission to import contacts or leads, you can choose how to import new contacts or leads based on your system configuration.

Important When completing the import, the Import from File option supports UTF-8 character encoding only. If you require a different character encoding format, select Import, Update, or Export to complete your import using the Data Import Wizard, which allows you to select a character code standard.

The CSV file import uses the same data matching and import rules as the Data Import Wizard and offers these key features.

• Easy to follow, guided experience.
• A sample CSV file to ensure your data is in the right format.
• Automated matching to data already in your system to identify duplicate records.
• Easy to select options to map fields in your file to fields in Salesforce.
• Previews of mapped fields.

After you import your data, you receive an email summary with the results of the import. If the import failed due to multiple errors, an error details file is attached. If the import failed only because of duplicate records, no error details are attached.

Salesforce recommends that you test a small file first to make sure that you’ve prepared your source data correctly. Any duplicate leads are identified by matches in Name only.

For large or complex import jobs, to import data for other objects, to import updates to existing contacts and leads, or for support for other Salesforce editions, use the Data Import Wizard or the Data Loader import options.