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Import and Export

The Import and Export section includes topics covering working with and troubleshooting imports and exports of data in Sugar.

Topics

This article addresses frequently asked questions about importing data into Sugar.
There may be occasions when you wish to export emails from your Sugar® instance. While the export action cannot be performed via Sugar's user interface, you can export emails by running a SQL query directly against your instance's database.
Sugar® allows users to export data to a CSV file directly from the module's list view or from a rows-and-columns report. When records in your Sugar database contain special characters (e.g. é, à, ú, and ð), the exported CSV file may not display the characters correctly. This article covers how to properly define the export character set in Sugar so that special characters display correctly in the CSV file.
Sugar®'s import wizard allows users to easily create new records and update existing records using a CSV file. There may be occasions where you want to create or update records to have more than one email address. Users can include various email addresses (primary and secondary emails) in the import file and also specify if the email address should be marked as "Primary", "Invalid" or "Opted Out" on the record. This article covers how to prepare and import multiple email addresses to individual Sugar records.
Sugar's line item modules (e.g. Revenue Line Items, Quoted Line Items, and Purchased Line Items) represent the various elements of the sales cycle as they relate to their parent modules (e.g. Opportunities, Quotes, and Purchases). The import function allows you to insert multiple records into Sugar using a .csv file instead of creating them one-by-one. Because each line item row must include its parent record's ID as well as other potential field values, the parent module records must be imported first. This article uses the Revenue Line items and Opportunities modules to explain the steps needed to import these types of records. 
While individual relationships between records can be created in the Sugar® user interface, there may be occasions when you want to relate many records at a time. Users can create relationships between records using the import tool. This article covers some best practices and walks through example steps for importing related records.
Sugar®'s import wizard allows users to easily update existing records by referencing each records' unique ID number. For more information about updating records via import, see the Knowledge Base article Updating Records via Import. There may be occasions, though, when the update file does not contain the ID field for the records you want to update. In these situations, you can use the Microsoft Excel® VLOOKUP function to insert the correct ID for each row of your spreadsheet. 
When importing data into Sugar®, you may notice that the Assigned To field is not populating correctly for records. This article will cover how to properly map the Assigned To field during the import process to ensure that the field is populated correctly for records. For more information on importing, please refer to the Import documentation.
When importing new or updated data into Sugar, you must ensure that date values are in the format that Sugar expects. This article explains how to confirm that your date format preferences are consistent between the import file, your user preferences, and the Import Wizard properties.
Non-admin users cannot see records imported into Sugar.
While Sugar provides the Mass Update utility to quickly update a set of records, you may find that updating records through a spreadsheet is much more efficient. This article will cover how to use Sugar's import tool to update existing records.
Sugar's contact qualification and workflow process starts from the Targets module. When a target is confirmed, the individual then becomes a lead, and when vetted, eventually becomes a contact. Of course, regardless of this process, users can still manually enter records directly into modules and may create a new lead record for a person who already has a contact record. With all of these different modules in Sugar, you may find yourself in the situation where there are duplicates across multiple modules that should be cleaned up.