From: William Leung
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 4:31 PM
To: Microsoft
Subject: Excel Awesomeness
Dear Microsoft,
By now, you must think I hate Excel. I've already written a couple of blogs about Excel and/or people's strange fixation with using Excel for everything. I work for a CRM company. So you can imagine the frustration I used to feel when I see people storing all their contact information in an Excel sheet and trying to use it as a pseudo CRM.
But really, thank you for making such an awesome product. It is great for doing spreadsheet stuff.
Come to think about it, if all you are storing is like, phone numbers, and names, I guess Excel could be okay.
But what if you want to get your Excel contact lists into Maximizer?
For example, let's say you had a spreadsheet with the following fields:
| Last Name |
First Name |
Company |
Phone Number |
Address |
Birthday |
Importing this sheet into Maximizer is easy. There are a few things you need to do first to your spreadsheet to get it ready for importing.
- Make sure all rows have a last name or company filled in. You can do a search in Excel for all blank cells in a column and replace it with information of a period. That way, when importing, Maximizer will not ask you a hundred times for a hundred missing last names.
- Save the Excel sheet in CSV format. Do this by going to file > save as. Then, in the "Save as type" drop down, select CSV. You may get a couple popups saying something about losing formatting. Just hit OK and make sure the CSV gets saved. After it's saved, open it up again just to make sure it's ok. After that, CLOSE excel.
Now, in Maximizer...
- Go to file > import > Address Book Entries
- Select the CSV file saved from step 2 above. In the "Type of import" section, select the Companies/Individuals option. This will import all the company names and no contacts. That's the "second tier". We'll talk about that soon.
- When you get to the "Select Fields for Import" screen, match up the Order of import fields with the Fields from file fields for company fields only, and skip the rest. So in our example, we will match up the Company and Address field with the matching fields in Maximizer. See the picture below:
- Click Import to import the first layer (or tier).
- After the first tier has imported, go to file > import > Address Book Entries.
- Select the same CSV file. In the "Type of import" section, select the Contacts option. This will import the contacts.
- When you get to the "Select Fields for Import" screen, match up the Order of import fields with the Fields from file fields for contact fields only, and skip the rest. BUT make sure to also include the company field. It is critical that you do, or else the import will not work. So in our example, we will match up the Last Name, First Name, Company, Phone Number, and Birthday field with the matching fields in Maximizer. See the picture below:
- Click Import to complete the second tier of the import.
The import is now done. It's now time to go through your Address Book to verify everything is ok. Any company where you put a period or some sort of filler information in the CSV file will need to be dealt with appropriately.
Thanks, Microsoft, for making such an excellent program. Keep up the good work.
Best Regards,
Will "Excel's BFF" Leung