Cleaning Up Data

It is very important that each column of data contains the same type of data, otherwise importing the data file would provide disastrous results. The import process will simply import whatever is in that column into that field in the database. For example, the 'Company' column should only contain Company names. If it does not, the import may end up with last names in the first name or addresses in a company name. Each patron would have to be deleted and the import would have to be started again.

When data importing, you should 'clean up the data' prior to importing. This can be done by creating separate columns for:

• patron salutation
• patron name-first (if the first and last are in the same field, the import will auto-split them)
• patron name-last
• address line 1
• address line 2
• city
• province
• postal code/Zip Code
• country (Optional)