ODB provides an easy-to-use import facility that is able to bring in basic lists very quickly. The import feature makes it very easy to load contact data (name, email, phone, and address). And it even provides a facility to load in old donations (if you have an ID for each gift to match it up with the donor). The feature is well documented in the ODB user manual.

Here are two typical use cases:

A. Startup organization has three different spreadsheets: one for individual donors and prospects, one for organizational contacts, and one for journalists. Organization has a donor history small enough to be entered manually.

Way to use the import feature:
1. Remove (or consolidate) unnecessary columns in the spreadsheets
2. Save each of the spreadsheets as "text, tab separated format"
3. Import all of the spreadsheets into ODB, with duplicate checking on.

B. Longstanding organization has a very simple Access database with two tables: People and Gifts.

Way to use the import feature:
1. Remove (or consolidate) unnecessary fields in the database. Be sure not to remove the ID number field in the People table and the "people ID" or "donor ID" field in the Gifts table, as these will be needed by ODB.
2. Export each table to "text, tab separated" format
3. Import the people table data into ODB, with duplicate checking turned off and with the extended fields option turned on. The "people or donor ID" field from the old database should be imported into the "OldID" field in ODB.
4. Import the Gifts table data into ODB, with the option to match up donors based on the OLDID field turned on.

Although these basic examples suggest that importing of old data is an extremely simple process that anyone can attempt, this is not always the case. You must at least be familiar with navigating files and folders in Windows in order to attempt the steps above. And even if you are very comfortable with computers, your group may still have its information in a legacy donor database with a complex structure. For cases like this, a lot of time can be saved by enlisting the services of a computer consultant who has done it before.

The rest of this page provides a few resources that have been created to help those importing data into ODB. (Some of these resources may be a bit dated, so if you find info that needs to be updated, please post a tip to the forums. Thanks!)

1. Email list post on importing tracking codes (Jan. 2003) --
How to import tracking codes from old odb database

2. Advanced importing tips

We plan to create an importing preparation worksheet to list the steps required to prepare old data into a format that ODB can read. Here are a few of the steps (feel free to comment on this and add others):

* creating a list of priority fields that need preserving
* saving the data into a spreadsheet format
* creating a second spreadsheet for donation data
* combining codes into separate "activities, "constituencies", "VID", and "issues" columns
* making a list of SRC codes in use

If your databases have several years' worth of data, organized in a fairly idiosyncratic way, you may wish to purchase data conversion services from OC. An OC consultant will walk you through the process of preparing a sample of your data, and once provided, will give you an estimate of the cost of data conversion.