FM Newcomer with some very basic questions...

[mtngrl]

[color:purple][color:purple]Hello FM pro's. I'm a newcomer and have been teaching myself this new program this week. I have a couple of initial questions:

1. when I import data from an Excel doc, it completely overrides my new database. Needless to say, I only had to learn this lesson once and have not tried an Excel import since. (ptsd) Any suggestions on how to import info without losing all of my entered data?

2. Also, my imported Excel data did not "line-up" with the FM fields in my records. i.e. the email addresses in the "email" column of Excel did not end up in the "email" field of my FM records after the import. Tips?

and finally, 3. I need to enter a whole slew of names and email addresses into a doc (haven't decided yet Excel, FM, Word...) because I need them for 2 uses - I need to enter them into a website because they have requested my e-newsletter, but I also want the data in my FM database after I enter them into the web-based distribution list. I'm wondering what program I should enter them into. Options I have thought of: Input name and email into Excel, then copy into website distribution site, then import into FM (tho this takes us back to my 1st and 2nd questions, of losing data when I import from Excel AND of my fields not matching up upon import...), or I could do it in Word and then import? Not sure - any tips?

This is long, and you are patient for reading this far. Thank you!

[Reed]

The key to all of this is the import field mapping dialog you get after choosing the excel file to import.

You probably have chosen "update existing records in found set" which will overwrite records in the found set based on the sort order of the source and destination records.

If you want to add new records, just choose that option.

To get the fields to line up, you need to select the "arrange by" menu, and choose by matching field names or other criteria. If there are no matching field names (or no field names in the excel file at all) then you need to drag the target fields to the right order to line them up with the source data.

Dana

[mtngrl]

[color:purple]Hello Dana - thanks so much for the info! I finally have a chance to work on this today, and while some of it really helped, I have one more lingering but very important question!

I followed your advice on the import field mapping dialog, and that worked great. I set it to match field names, etc. and the all the imported data went to the right fields, so thanks for that.

Now, the lingering question is how to not overwrite my existing data. I understand what you said about update existing records in found set vs. add new records but still, after my import, all I can see is the imported data.

So I am wondering 2 things:

1. am I still somehow overwriting my data?

and 2. what is the difference between "Records" and "Found" ? Maybe the previous data is in there somewhere, and i just can't find it!