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Importing Connections

Lesley Updated by Lesley

This article will discuss importing connections between tables.

You can use an import to create connections to other records. When you import records into an existing tables, you can choose which field from that table to match the column in the file you are importing to. Likewise, you can also match a column in your file to a field in a connecting table. Knack will then use that match to find a record to connect to.

These connection fields will have the symbol:

In the example above, we’re importing a file containing Company records. We’re matching the data in the CSV file to the records that already exist in Knack using the ID column. This field was chosen because it contains a unique value for each record. The import will use the value of that column to search for any Company records that have the same ID. If it finds one, it will connect the Service record - created by the row in the imported file - to that ID.

Importing to a Many-to-Many Connection Field

You can also import to a many-many connection field. Make sure the file is formatted such that the multiple records to be stored in the connection field are:

  1. Comma-separated or row separated,
  2. WITHOUT a space before or after each comma, and
  3. Contained within a single cell

It will look like this:

First child,second child,third child

Or this:

First child

Second child

Third child

If you are formatting your CSV in Excel, you do not need to add the quotation marks, Excel will do this automatically. You can verify the format is correct by opening your CSV in a text editor application.
If you're importing and setting connection values to multi-part fields, such as Name & Address fields, you'll get inconsistent results or the values won't be set at all.

We suggest you use other unique fields such as email address or an ID field as your display field in the connected table and map to that value in your import. This can even be done temporarily until after you have completed your import and the records have indexed.

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