Import Accounts with Contacts from Excel to Salesforce

My Task: I have Excel spreadsheets with Accounts and Contacts. I need to import it to Salesforce.

How can I adjust the input date?

I can see at a glance:

1) First Name, Last Name, Academic Title assignment chaotic. Sometimes academic title is before the first name, sometimes behind the first name. First name and last name can be in reverse order. Sometimes is first name missing.

What can I do?

I need separate my contact´s first name, last name and academic title in Excel. I need to split full name into three columns in Excel.

a) I can use Excel formulas – like left, right, find, len function. I can remove comma from the full name column.

 b) I can use Data – Text to columns.

2)     Street and street number are in separate cells. I need to merge it. Let´s use formulas Concatenate.

3)     Phone

Phone number is missing somewhere, sometimes there are two phone numbers. It could be a problem during import. We can use simply split cells into two columns. It´s good to take care of the appropriate terminology field names – for example Phone, Mobile, or we create a custom field (Phone2, Mobile2...)

4) I modify phone´s format, format of Post Zip.

Try to label each column in the excel file with a name that corresponds to the standard or custom Salesforce field.

I save this file in .csv format.

In this case I prefer Data Import Wizard.

In the end I verify that the date is successfully imported. I have a choise use report, create custom Account View, check Account page, check Contact page.

Why me and Salesforce?

Sometimes I hear a question: Why you and Salesforce?

My answer is simple but the explanation is longer. Can you image my situation?

I´m a woman, who has spent a lot of time at home. You can say: “You were a housewife, what about your responsibilities and your work experiences? You are not a good person for our business.“  And you may be right, of course. I took care of my whole family, of my children, house and our untidy dog. I´m satisfied, I regret nothing. The results of my work are great. Since 2009 I have cooperated with the municipal government. My tasks were connected with international cooperation. I organized trips abroad and children's summer camps.

Since 2011 I‘ve had a great hobby. It´s geocaching. I prefer to solve cache puzzles. I really like it. I repeated html codes, ascii, learning to look for answers. For example: do you know: exif, morse code, roman numerals, ascii codes, binary, hexadecimal, caesar ciphers, vigenere ciphers? Do you know the differences between commonly used formats of coordinates? I can work with pictures and look for hidden coordinates. It means, I can change various attributes such as brightness, contrast, color depth on the customization application.

I often go with my family abroad to find geocaches and fill in places on my geocache map.

In 2015 suddenly it´s time to make some money. I should go back to work. But I thought, what can I do? What do I want to do? Go to work in a government office? I enjoy working with numbers. I can fill different tax forms and accounting and economics feel close to me.

My husband is a practical man. „Are you sure, you want to spend 9 hours a day at work? Doing routine work, every day. I know you, you need to use your brain at work. What about Salesforce? It´s a new platform, only few people in the Czech Republic can work with it. It´s a great opportunity to set yourself a part. You should learn Salesforce and your time will come.“ This conversation is about a year ago. The beginnings wasn't easy.

How can I express my feelings? I like to watch the British sitcom, The IT Crowd. Sometimes, I feel like Jen Barber. In the beginning she knows nothing about computers or IT. But, step by step she got the necessary knowledge and became an important member of the IT team.

I wish to be a skilled member of the Salesforce community too.

I also write a blog about CRM Salesforce in Czech.
http://hankasrnova.blogspot.cz/