Import Guide

Most of you already have a list of your members and other contacts - in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access or some other system or format. Wild Apricot's import function allows you to load your existing list into your Wild Apricot account (and, by the way, you can easily export your list from Wild Apricot at any moment)

Import - Getting started

To initiate the import process, go to the Members tab and use Import link. This will start the Wild Apricot import wizard:

On the first screen, a wizard highlights four important things we recommend you to do before you import your list:
1) Delete existing members if necessary
2) Customize your membership database fields - see below
3) Setup your member levels - see below
4) Also, there are many different formats and systems people use to keep their lists, most of which can export the list in Microsoft Excel- compatible format. The description below will assume that you have converted your list into Microsoft Excel format. If you have any problems with that, please talk to the person who setup your current member management system - ask them to help you with 'exporting' your list into a Microsoft Excel format.

Customize your membership database fields

System Fields and Custom Fields
Any newly created Wild Apricot account has a member database already setup with the most common data fields, such as First name, Last Name, Organization, Phone etc. You can rename and move these fields - as well as add new fields specific to your organization.
There are also some 'system' fields - fields used by Wild Apricot membership management and other features, such as: Member since, Member status etc. You can not delete these fields (some of them can be renamed).
For more information, see Customizing your member database
We recommend that before importing your current list, you should match your current list fields (columns) with Wild Apricot member database fields - and add or change fields as necessary. It is not critical to do so - you can always add fields later and repeat the import process as many times as necessary.

Setup appropriate Member levels

Member level is one of the fields available in the Wild Apricot member database - some people refer to it as member type or member category. Note that your database can contain other records, not only members - for example, sponsors, newsletter subscribers, volunteers etc. See Member levels
We recommend that you setup appropriate Member levels in your Wild Apricot database before importing your list - of course you can always add them later and update each member level by hand or repeat the import to update the levels.

Press [Continue] to proceed with import after you have reviewed the items above.

Import - Download template

To help you with the import process, Wild Apricot provides a special template in Excel format for your member database:

Click on the link on this screen to download this template. This template will already include all the custom fields you have added to the standard database. The format of this template is in Microsoft Excel XML Spreadsheet - one of the most common spreadsheet formats. You can open this template in Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 on PC or Office 2004 on Mac.

The template contains a column for each of the fields in your Wild Apricot member database and comments on using each field. (in the column heading cell).

Once downloaded, open the template in Microsoft Excel:

We provide a few sample records in the template so that you can see how it should look like with actual data in it. Delete these sample records before you import this file back into Wild Apricot.

Open a second Microsoft Excel file with your existing member list prepared earlier in another window. Here are the notes on some important fields:

E-mail - this field is mandatory and has to be unique. Wild Apricot will only import one record with a specific email, all other records with the same email will be discarded.
Password - you can leave this empty. Member can use 'Forgot password' feature to reset their emails in Wild Apricot.
Member group ID - this field relates to Group Membership Level. Leave it empty for the import (it will be ignored during import anyway). Once the records are imported, you can link up group members from within the group administrator record.
Member role - this field relates to Group Membership Level. It can be Individual, Group administrator, Group Member. If you do not have any group membership levels, set it to Individual.
Membership Level - this field is required and if you don't provide it the default level will be used automatically.
Status - This represents the status of the member record. It must contain one of the following values: Active, Lapsed, Pending Renewal, Pending - New, Pending - Upgrade. In most cases, Pending - New is a good choice for this field for loading your list into Wild Apricot. If left empty, the default Pending - New status will be used.
Send Event Reminders and Subscribed to member e-mailings - these are email preferences. If you leave them empty, they automatically default to No.
Archived - This field determines if the record has been archived. Members with archived records are considered inactive and can't login and won't receive any email notifications. Normally you would set this to No for all your active members (If left empty, it defaults to No)
Show in Member Directory - determines if the member record is opted in to be shown in the member directory. Each member can login and change this setting in their profile.
Details to Show - This defines which database fields are to be shown for this particular record in the member directory. Just as the field above, it works in conjunction with Member levels settings and each member can update these settings in their profile. Moreover, administrators can define which fields are to be shown on member details pages in Member directory (and then members can decide which out of these are to be shown for his own record). This field should contain field names separated with a new line (To add a new line in MS Excel in Windows use Alt+Enter). If left empty, the default selection of First name, Last name will be applied.
Directory Listing Text - this is an extra field for the member directory. You can specify in Member directory settings which member levels are allowed access to this field.
Notes - for any ad hoc notes. If you add new columns to Wild Apricot template which do not correspond to Wild Apricot member database, values in these columns will be copied into notes.

Import - Transferring your list into Wild Apricot template.

Now for the most time consuming part - work your way through the template transferring the data from your existing database into the template. Typically, you would go column by column in the file with your current list, copy it and then paste into the appropriate column in Wild Apricot template file. Then review the system fields described above. Save your file frequently to avoid loosing your work by accident!
Take your time transferring the data - you can now safely exit Wild Apricot and resume this import wizard later when you are finished. Once you are finished transferring all your data, you are ready to run the import wizard. This template file now contains your list of members. This is the file to import into Wild Apricot. Click [Proceed to Upload Your File]

Import - Upload and Validate Data

Click the [Browse] button and find your saved file. (it has to be in XML Spreadsheet format with .xml extension)
Click [Upload]

Now the system will load up the file with your member list and check it for correct formatting - overall and for each record.
If your file contains records which can not be imported, you will see a screen like this:

In this example, the system found 5 total records in your file and 2 of those records are flagged that they can not be properly imported. If you click on the [Download import file with error details] button, you will get your import file back with comments inserted for each record:

Two new columns are added to your file: Record status and All warnings/errors.
The first column tells you whether this record is new (does not exist in Wild Apricot yet), existing or invalid.
The second column provides specific errors and warnings in the comment - in the example above, the system tells you that the e-mail field is required. Problematic records and specific fields with errors and warnings are highlighted with color too.
Normally you should review and fix the errors, then try to upload it again (no need to delete extra validation columns and comments, they will be ignored).
Alternatively, you can ignore the problematic records for now and import all others.
You get to choose which of the records you want to import - change the appropriate checkboxes as needed:

New records - records which did not exist in Wild Apricot before your import
Existing records - this means you might have already imported or created records so here you have to confirm that you want to update these existing records according to what you have in this import file.
Records with errors - some errors are not critical, just warnings so if you have reviewed them and are satisfied, then they are not critical, you can tell the system and import all problematic records it can. (Records with critical errors like missing e-mail will be skipped anyway)
Click on [Next] to proceed.

Import - final step

System will display your selections and ask you to confirm that you want to proceed with import (import is a time-consuming operation which can affect your whole database of members so we have to be extra careful!)

Click [Import] to initiate the import process.
The import process will be initiated and you will see a message to that effect.
Please note that the import process might take some time - if you do not have to sit and wait in front of the screen, you can close off the browser and the import will continue.
Once finished - if you did not leave the import screen before that - the system will display a confirmation message and provide a link to your member list - now loaded into Wild Apricot system!
This screen displays the results of the import process, including the total number of records imported.

To see the imported contacts list, click Go to members list