Export / Import not working as expected

#1

I am on a Mac and using excel. I’ve had a terrible time formatting everything to get it to import properly. Finally, I got it all in the system and realized that the “display name” is not set. So, I thought “easy”. I’ll just export from S2, fix and import back. But, when I do it fails.

Is there something bad that happens when you use Excel on Mac and try to export/open/save a CSV? Is there a better program that will import better using a Mac?

#2

I don’t use a Mac; I’m on Linux. But I always use LibreOffice Calc for this sort of thing. As its name implies, LibreOffice is free.

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#3

I’m on a Mac, but also use LibreOffice for csv imports/exports since both Excel and Numbers seem to mangle things.

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#4

You guys a winners! That was very helpful. THANK YOU! I have one odd thing that I’m not sure how to fix now.

  • I have two custom checkbox fields. One is default checked one is default unchecked.
  • The spreadsheet wants to label them either 1 or 0.
  • One the front end, I have some custom code that in two places that displays the information like a membership directory. The checks denote if they can opt-in or out of the directory display.

My problem is that it will not honor the checks unless I recheck/uncheck them. I double-checked my fields in LibreOffice and they were formatted “numbers” and I formatted them “text”. Neither honors it unless I manually go in and reset those checks in each profile.

Any ideas how to make this work automatically?

#5

Have you tried exporting first to see how it likes to be formatted?

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#6

Yep. I exported from S2 and then opened. I thought maybe I was using the wrong thing. But they look like plain 1s and 0s. I’m stumped. And I also tried “checked” and “unchecked”.

#7

Then I think you need to use a different plugin that will recognize those meta values on import. I suggest this one: https://wordpress.org/plugins/import-users-from-csv-with-meta/

#8

I’m a bit confused as to the end goal. You started by saying you were importing.

From what?

And then you tried to export/re-import the failed import to try to fix it?

Personally I’ve never had much luck with any of the import/export plugins since they usually require too much CSV modification so I usually just write a script to convert it from one CSV format to the other.

#9

Sorry for the confusion.

My first pass at importing is “mostly” done. What I am left with is it not recognizing the checked/unchecked boxes, of which I have two. So, I exported the members from s2 using s2s export feature. I opened in LibreOffice to check that the variables were either 1s or 0s (in the two original admins I added) and I didn’t have something wrong. The rest of the members have blank fields in those columns. I replaced with 1s and 0s as needed (by copy/pasting from the admin fields that showed it correctly) and uploaded the CSV (using the S2 import) and it still won’t read them.

If you look on each person’s profile page you can see them checked or unchecked, but if you look at the list of members those columns have dashes unless you manually go to the profile page and recheck/uncheck the boxes.

None of this would matter too much except I am displaying members on the front end based on whether they have those boxes checked/unchecked.

Thanks for your interest.