Sometimes importing can go a little awry... And whilst there's no 'undo' button, this guide will help you reset or re-import to get things ship-shape!
First things first: what went wrong?
I created lots of duplicate records (e.g. 20 of the same event when importing event attendees)
The data I imported was wrong (e.g. I misspelled people's names or forgot to map something)
Dealing with duplicates
If you've had lots of records created that are duplicates then you've likely forgotten to set deduplication for that particular record type. You can check your import template to make sure you'd chosen a field to deduplicate by.
With the data that's been imported, there's two ways to deal with it depending on how large your data set is:
Merge the duplicates (easiest for small data sets)
Delete the records created and re-import (easiest for large data sets)
Merging duplicates
Select the duplicates (e.g. all the events with the same name), click the action button and choose 'Merge records'. Anything pointing at those records will now all point at the one merged record.
Read more about merging records.
Success: Easy peasy, done and dusted!
Fixing incorrect data
You've imported some data and it's just not quite right... maybe you forgot to map a particular column, maybe you mapped the wrong thing to one of your fields, or maybe you just hadn't realised your spreadsheet had some messy data in it!
The solution will depend a little on what your import was doing:
I was updating existing records only (not creating anything new): Simply re-import your data! If you are updating existing records that means your deduplication is working correctly, so you can go ahead and re-import the correct data to update those records again.
I was updating some existing records, and also creating some new ones: Delete the new records created and re-import your data
I was creating new records only (not updating anything): Delete the new records created and re-import your data
Delete and re-import
If you have created any new records, it's usually best to delete those records and then run your import again. You won't usually need to worry about any existing records that were updated, as they'll be updated again by your re-import.
Tip: If you've set deduplication settings for all the records you're importing to, and every record has something in that field (e.g. you're deduplicating People by email and every person you're importing to has an email address) you can simply re-import without needing to delete!
Select all the records that were created by this import. See our FAQ for some tips to find them!
Click the action button and choose to 'Delete' them
Fix your data errors, and run your import again.
Success: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again! All sorted.
FAQ
How can I find the records that were created by this import?
Here are some handy suggestions to help narrow down your lists to just those you want to delete.
If only a few records:
Sort your list by the 'Created' date, this should bring the records to the top and you can manually select them
If many records, add filters for:
'Created by me'
'Created date is today' (only if you haven't created any other records today)
Still need to be more specific?
Add something unique about that import, such as:
If you were importing attendees for a particular event, you could add 'Event is XYZ' to your filter
If you were importing a list of people who volunteer, you could add 'Type is Volunteer' to your filter
If you were importing payments from Facebook, you could add 'Source is Facebook' to your filter