Combining Last/First Name & Import CSV Merge

[Helen_Li1]

I am maintaining a contacts CRM database for my supervisor in Airtable. We imported LinkedIn contacts, however, now with everyone changing jobs, the companies and positions are not updated. I attempted to download the connections from LinkedIn and then do an Import CSV merge so that the contacts can update. Zapier does not have a linkage between LinkedIn and Airtable for this kind of trigger.

However, my supervisor has many contacts that have similar last name, first names that are repeated. The Last Name and First Name columns were originally separated, I then tried to combine them with a formula into a new column.

When I import the CSV file and try to find the drop down menu for merging, the new 3rd formula column is never available. (I had already formatted the CSV file to have a “Last Name, First Name” column with a space between the comma, etc.) So the CSV cannot find the right columns to merge with. Since there are 1000+ contacts, I did not want to copy and past everything. Is there a solution? In Import CSV Merge settings, can you merge with a new column that is made from a formula?

[ScottWorld]

Yeah, it’s odd that the CSV merge option doesn’t let you choose more than one field to match on as your matching field criteria. That would be a great feature request that you can add in the #show-and-tell:product-suggestions category.

And CSV merge also doesn’t work on formula fields, because it wouldn’t be able to add new records that way.

So your best bet would be to temporarily convert your “last name, first name” formula field into a text field. It will still retain the contents of your previous formula results.

Then, match on that field for your CSV merge.

Afterwards, you can convert that text field back to a formula field again, but note that if your CSV import added any new records, you will lose the “last name, first name” contents of those new records — unless you also imported separated “first name” and “last name” fields from your CSV file.