Answers.Body: <p>If you don't have 'External Identifier' for everyone yet - do a Contact import first!</p>
  
  <p><strong>Contact import:</strong>
  Include the data fields used for contact "matching" based on your configured Duplicate Matching rules. For the default duplicate matching rules, you would include 3 columns in each row with the contributors' First Name, Last Name and Email Address.</p>
  
  <p>Your main Goal here is to find the Contacts in your Database and add an 'External Identifier' for them (and these come from your Go CardLess)</p>
  
  <p><strong>Contribution import:</strong>
  Very straightforward now that everyone has an 'External Identifier' - you can even now dump the name fields; all you need is 'External Identifier' and the contribution data columns.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-07-08T13:04:26.387Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-07-08T13:04:26.387Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: KarinG - Semper IT
Body: <p>I want to do a contributions import using a spreadsheet exported from Go Cardless.</p>
  
  <p>When matching this info to contacts in Civi, 'External Identifier' is a mandatory field. I want to override what exists there as not everyone currently has an External Identifier, using data from Go Cardless.</p>
  
  <p>How do I do that?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2016-07-08T11:24:58.310Z
Comments.Text: Do I need to run an import of the contacts again but use a dedup rule that only applies to another field, and select 'update' rather than 'skip' for duplicates?
Comments.UserDisplayName: Nicola
Tags: <import>
Title: How do I manually update External Identifier
ThreadText: # How do I manually update External Identifier
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2016-07-08)
  
  I want to do a contributions import using a spreadsheet exported from Go Cardless.
  
  When matching this info to contacts in Civi, 'External Identifier' is a mandatory field. I want to override what exists there as not everyone currently has an External Identifier, using data from Go Cardless.
  
  How do I do that?
  
  Thanks!
  
  **Tags:** import
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: Do I need to run an import of the contacts again but use a dedup rule that only applies to another field, and select 'update' rather than 'skip' for duplicates?  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2016-07-08. Score: 2
  
  If you don't have 'External Identifier' for everyone yet - do a Contact import first!
  
  **Contact import:**
  Include the data fields used for contact "matching" based on your configured Duplicate Matching rules. For the default duplicate matching rules, you would include 3 columns in each row with the contributors' First Name, Last Name and Email Address.
  
  Your main Goal here is to find the Contacts in your Database and add an 'External Identifier' for them (and these come from your Go CardLess)
  
  **Contribution import:**
  Very straightforward now that everyone has an 'External Identifier' - you can even now dump the name fields; all you need is 'External Identifier' and the contribution data columns.
  
  
  ---
  
  