Merging Records

Overview

• The [Merge] tool allows you to merge two records (i.e. event registrations, financial transactions etc). After the merge, one record is kept active and the other record is archived (see Archived Contact).
• Merging records can not be undone.
• Merge tool assumes that you have already identified the records to merge - there is currently no automation to find suspected duplicates.
• To start merging, open one of the duplicate records and click on 'Merge' button - you will then be able to locate and select the second record and decide which one to keep and which one to archive.

For example, you may have a member "johnsmith@foomail.com" who registered for an event with his alternative e-mail address "johnsmith@barmail.com". Now you want to reconcile this registration to his membership record (e.g., johnsmith@foomail.com") - use [Merge] tool to combined the record johsmith@foomail.com with johnsmith@barmail.com.

What is being merged

Most of the data from two separate records can be merged however there are some exceptions (see below) 

Fully Transferred

• Event registrations
• Donations
• Photo albums
• Blog posts
• Forum posts
• Group participation
• Forum subscriptions
• Subscription sources
• Sent e-mails
• Finances
  • Balance
  • Invoices
  • Payments & Refunds
  • Audit log

Merging Limitations

When merging a member with a non-member, all membership data will be transferred over, including passwords. However if both are members then all the member information of the record you wish to discard will NOT be merged. 

Privacy and Email preferences

• All the field Privacy settings and Email preferences settings are not merged.

Administrative Roles

• Administrative rights are not merged (If the record being discarded is an admin then these admin rights will NOT be transferred over to the other record). 

Contacts that cannot be merged

• a Bundle admin with bundle members
• the only Full admin
• your own contact record
• a Member with active recurring payments

Starting merge

To start a merge, find (any) one of the two records you want to merge.

Now that you've select one of the records, press the [Merge] button:

Next, select the second record:

Now, pick which record to keep (merged data will be stored in that record) and which to archive.

And finally enter the word "Merge" in the text box to complete this merge.

This extra bit of caution/confirmation helps to prevent mistakes - because this operation can't be undone and reversing a merge would be a tedious manual process.

If everything worked correctly, you should see this confirmation message. Note that you can still find the archived (e.g,. discarded) record - see Archived vs. active records