Import Profiles
Bring in a whole batch of profiles.
- You'll need the Merge Individual permission.
You might have records entered into another church management system or a database/spreadsheet program. With some changes to their formatting, those records can be imported into Realm in the form of a CSV file.
Records imported into Realm through the Import from .csv option will have a Profile Type of Person.
- If your data is in another program, export it from your existing program as a comma-separated file or CSV. Most record-keeping programs can do this. It might not have a .csv extension, but if it can be opened in a spreadsheet program, manipulated, and saved as a CSV file, it will probably work.
- In the top-left corner, click your ministry hub then Realm. Then click . Then click Import Profiles.
- Click Import from .csv.
- Click Download.csv template and open it in a spreadsheet program such as Excel. This is an empty .csv import file based on the fields you currently use in Realm.
- Now open the file you're going import in a spreadsheet program such as Excel. You can also edit the files directly in a text editor such as Notepad. Change the first-row field names in your import file as needed to exactly match the field names used by Realm. Reference the columns in the template you downloaded. Only fields named "First Name" and "Last Name" are required. Field order is unimportant. The list of accepted field names is shown below this procedure.† Fields not in the list will not be imported.
- Rename any non-standard field values. For instance, acceptable values for Marital Status are limited to those that you have defined in Realm. If "Married", "Single", and "Divorced" are your only selectable values in Realm, you cannot have any other values for that field in your import file. So a record whose Marital Status was "Widowed" would not be imported. For other fields, like Primary Address Line 1, any alphanumeric entry is acceptable. If any field in a record is rejected, that person's entire record will fail to import. If the field value is blank, the record will still import. A list of accepted field values is shown later on this page.†
- Save your file as a .csv, for instance, "ImportedRecords.csv". Your spreadsheet program might remind you that some formatting will be lost. That's OK, so just confirm.
- Click Choose File, locate your .csv.
- Give your Import Description a name, such as "Profile Import 1" and click Next Step. The first five lines of the import data are displayed, along with any mismatched column names.
- If everything looks good, click Yes. If not, click No, correct any problems in your .csv file, and return to the steps above. You can also make a limited number of changes by using the Edit (to select a matching field name) and Skip (to leave this field out of the import) commands. Be sure to scroll all the way over to the right to view all fields.
- You are returned to the Import Profiles page. When your latest import turns to a blue link, the process is completed. Click the link to view the details of the import.
- To resolve a duplicate, click Resolve. For more, see Duplicate Profiles.
Accepted Fields for Import
Here are the accepted field names and values for import.
Accepted field names:
| Title | First Name* | Middle Name |
| Last Name* | Suffix | Preferred Name |
| Primary Address Line 1 | Primary Address Line 2 | Primary Address City |
| Primary Address Region | Primary Address Postal Code | Primary Address Country |
| Alternate Address Line 1 | Alternate Address Line 2 | Alternate Address City |
| Alternate Address Region | Alternate Address Postal Code | Alternate Address Country |
| Home Phone | Mobile Phone | Work Phone |
| Other Phone | Primary Email | Alternate Email |
| Birthdate | Family Position** | Marital Status |
| Gender | Member Status | Family Key |
| Campus*** | The exact names of other custom fields that you have created in Realm. These are included as columns in the template .csv. |
*Required
**Required if using Family Key field
***If you do not see this among the fields on the CSV template, your subscription plan does not allow for the use of campuses.
†Accepted Field Values
Values for the following fields can be any alphanumeric entry:
First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Suffix, Preferred Name, Primary Address Line 1, Primary Address Line 2, Primary Address City, Alternate Address Line 1, Alternate Address Line 2, Alternate Address City
Values for the following fields must be limited as described:
- Title, Suffix—Accepted values are limited to the those listed in the Title and Suffix drop-down list fields in Realm. You can find them by clicking , then the Profile Fields tab. Point to Suffix or Title and click
.
- Primary Address Region, Alternate Address Region—For the United States, this must be either a full state name or the postal abbreviation: Tennessee or TN. The same is true for Canadian provinces: British Columbia or BC. For other countries, any entry is accepted. If importing military addresses, this is where a military state would go: AA, AE, AP.
- Primary Address Postal Code, Alternate Address Postal Code—For the United States, this must be either a five-digit ZIP Code, or a ZIP+4.
- Primary Address Country, Alternate Address Country—Use the full name of the country or the standard two-letter abbreviation.
- Home Phone, Work Phone, Mobile Phone, Other Phone—These may, but need not, contain parentheses and hyphens; the import process will accept the number but remove the parentheses and hyphens. If a phone number contains a leading "1", it will be accepted, but the 1 will be removed. If a phone number contains an international code, such as "+43", the complete phone number will be accepted as-is.
- Primary Email, Alternate Email—These must be formatted as standard email addresses: john@example.org.
- Birthdate—This must be in either a m/d/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy format. 4/2/1968 is accepted. 04/02/1968 is accepted. 04/02/68 is not.
- Family Position—Accepted values are limited to the those listed in the Family Position drop-down list field in Realm. You can also find them by clicking , then the Family Positions tab. You can only have a total of two family members in each family using a primary position. You could, for instance, have a "Head" and "Spouse" or two "Spouses", but not two "Spouses" and a "Head" or three "Heads".
- Marital Status—Accepted values are limited to the those listed in the Marital Status drop-down list field in Realm. You can also find them by clicking , then the Profile Fields tab. Point to Marital Status and click
- Gender—Accepted values are limited to Male and Female.
- Member Status—Accepted values are limited to the those listed in the Status drop-down list field. You can also find them by clicking , then the Profile Fields tab. Point to Member Status and click
- Family Key—This is the family identifier you used in your previous record keeping system. The Joneses, for instance, are 52365. Realm will use this number to keep everyone with that identifier in the same family after the import. If you are importing records with family identifiers, a Family Position (described previously) must also be given to each individual.
- Family ID—This identifier is similar to the Family Key, but is generated by Realm. It is only used during the import process to help re-link family members whose records might have been rejected for some reason. If you are importing Family IDs, you will notice that individual records in the rejected records csv had a Family ID added to them. Typically, you should not delete this number before re-importing the file. An exception, of course, would be if you did not want the individual linked with that family.
How a CSV File Works with Imports
Helpful information about how to format a CSV file so Realm can import records.
Comma-separated files are used by many otherwise incompatible record-keeping programs and services to exchange data. Since the data must be understood by all programs, a CSV file consists of nothing but simple text and commas. The importing program or service uses this text to recreate each individual's record.
Here are the first three lines of a CSV file formatted in a way that lets Realm import records. The file could be hundreds of lines long, one line for each record.
The first row is a list of all the fields, separated by commas with no spaces, used for profiles. As you can also see, it is not case-sensitive.
Each of the lines that follow contain the field entries, in the same order as the first line, of each record. As with the field list, each entry is separated from the next by a comma. Two commas side-by-side indicate that the member does not have an entry for a particular field. For instance, Larry Appleton's record contains a last name and a first name, but no middle name. However, a comma is still necessary to keep the number and order of fields in Larry's record consistent with the list of fields in the first line of the CSV. Realm needs to make a one-to-one match between the list of all fields and the list of field entries in each individual's record—even if some of those entries are blank.