Although Salesforce has a powerful built-in data importing wizard, many advanced administrators prefer to use the third party data loader for moving records from one device to another. This is because the data loader is much easier to use and offers powerful features that you may not get with the built-in import wizard.
The data loader Salesforce tool is not just good for importing data. It can also be used to upsert and update new records at existing entry locations to make your data management process much smoother.
In this blog, we look at 10 ways that will help you update your data using the data loader utility.
How to Use Salesforce Data Loader Correctly
Before you start importing leads information into your new device, files should be checked, cleaned of excess information, verified for accuracy and converted into CSV format for easier update.
Here are 8 important things you need to check in Salesforce data files before they are updated through the Data Loader Salesforce.
- Use the appropriate data field based on the type of entries that you are importing.
- When updating records from multiple sources, each set of data needs to be imported in a separate CSV file and uploaded to the platform one by one. For instance, if you are importing data from your social media account and email contacts list, do two separate imports. If you try to update data from two separate files together it can cause field mapping issues.
- Data imported from an existing database must be in the correct date format consistently. In the UK, the date format is DD/MM/YYYY (date then month, followed by the four-digit year). If you are importing values from sources that have the US date system, then you will need to transfer it into the correct format. Make sure that all year values, including birth dates, registration dates, etc. have four digits in your data.
- Match the field names in the CSV file to the field names that are available in Salesforce. This process can be time-consuming if there are dozens of fields but it will make the process of mapping the fields accurate when you import the files. Be careful about how fields interrelate to one another.
- When you run the data Salesforce loader, you may get hard stops and alerts about field mismatches. These must be removed before importing the file into your current database. Both these errors can cause rows of data to get split during an update. The split may create partial records containing only the first or latter part of the information.
- Any entry that contains more than a single address will need each address to be mapped correctly.
- Make sure that files that are being updated are standardized according to the UTF-8 standard.
- Email addresses must not contain any spaces or special characters. They must also have an @ sign followed by the domain name for easier integration with emailing software.
