Import and duplicates

When you move to Rutba CRM from a spreadsheet or another system, you import your contacts from a CSV file. Later, the same person can end up twice, for example once from your store and once from a phone call. This guide covers both: importing, and finding and merging duplicates.

Before you start

• Importing and merging are for owners and administrators. Members and viewers do not see Import or Tools.
• Both work on active contacts. Archived contacts are left out of the duplicates page and cannot be merged.

Prepare the file

Save your spreadsheet as CSV. From Excel, any of the CSV options works: the file may be UTF-8 with or without a byte order mark, UTF-16, or Arabic Windows encoding. Commas, semicolons and tabs are all recognised as separators.

Columns are matched by their name in the first row, not by their position. These names are recognised, in English, Arabic, Turkish and French, without regard to case or accents:

Other columns are ignored. There is no screen to map columns by hand, so rename a column in the spreadsheet if it is not recognised. Each value goes through the same checks as the Add contact form: a phone number needs 6 to 15 digits, a country code is two letters, and so on. See Contacts.

Every imported contact gets the status Lead, the source Added manually and no owner. Change them afterwards one by one, or select a page of contacts and use With selected to assign an owner or add a tag.

Import contacts

1. Open Contacts in the sidebar and select Import.
2. In CSV file, choose your file.
3. Leave Import now. Leave unticked to check the file without saving. unticked for a first pass, and select Continue.
4. Read Check result: Rows, Ready or added, Already exist and Invalid, followed by the first 20 problems with their line numbers.
5. Fix the problems in your spreadsheet if you need to, choose the file again, tick Import now… and select Continue.
6. Import finished shows the same counts for the real run.

A check saves nothing. A real run saves every row that passes, in one go, and skips the others. Each new contact shows Contact created in its activity.

What happens to each row

Rows are never merged into existing contacts and existing contacts are never changed by an import. If your plan limits contacts, the rows past the limit are listed as invalid with the limit message.

Find duplicates

1. Open Contacts, then Tools, then Possible duplicates.
2. Each card is one group of contacts, headed Same email or Same phone number.

How contacts are grouped:

• Same email: exactly the same email address. Emails are saved in lower case, so case does not matter.
• Same phone number: the same last nine digits, so +966 50 123 4567 and 050 123 4567 are found together. Numbers shorter than nine digits are not compared this way.

The page shows up to 50 groups and up to 10 contacts per group, oldest contact first. After merging some, reload the page to see the next ones.

Adding a contact one by one only warns about an exact match of the email or the whole phone number. The duplicates page looks wider, by the end of the number, so it can find pairs that slipped through.

Merge two contacts

In each group, the first contact (the oldest) shows Stays. Every other contact has Merge into the first.

1. Open the contacts first if you are unsure they are the same person.
2. Select Merge into the first beside the contact to fold in.
3. The message Contacts merged. confirms it. Repeat for any other contact in the group.

What a merge does:

The merged contact is archived and marked as merged. Both contacts show Merged in their activity, and the merge is recorded in the audit log. Opening the merged contact takes you to the one that stays.

A merge cannot be undone, and a merged contact cannot be restored. If you picked the wrong pair, correct the details on the contact that stays.

Paste from Excel

You do not need to save a file. In Excel or Google Sheets, select your rows together with the first row of column names, copy them, and paste them into Paste from Excel or Google Sheets on the import page. Click Continue: the page shows Columns understood, for example الجوال → Phone, the columns it left out, and the first rows as they will be saved. Nothing is saved yet. If it looks right, click the button that names how many contacts it will import, for example Import these 2 contacts.

Column names are recognised in Arabic, English, Turkish and French: name, phone or mobile, email, company, job title and country.

Good to know

• The oldest contact in a group is always the one that stays. If a newer contact holds the better name or details, copy them onto the oldest contact before merging.
• If someone changes one of the two contacts while you merge, nothing is merged and you are asked to go back and try again.
• There is no bulk merge: each merge is one pair, on purpose.

Troubleshooting

• "No name column was found in the first row." Rename the column holding names to name or الاسم, and make sure the first row holds column names.
• "The file has more than 2000 rows." Split the file and import each part.
• "The file could not be read." Save the file again as CSV from your spreadsheet program.
• Arabic names look broken after import. Save as "CSV UTF-8" from Excel, then check the file again before importing.
• Many rows are "Already exist". Those people are already in your contacts with the same email or phone. This is expected when you import the same file twice.
• "Archived contacts cannot be merged." Restore the archived contact first, then merge.