Answers.Body: <p>As far as I understand, provided you are importing to the same Location Type then the match should occur without adding a new email address.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2017-09-10T21:15:47.947Z
Answers.Text: Exactly - check if your location type matches
Answers.UserDisplayName: KarinG - Semper IT
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Answers.CreationDate: 2017-09-12T06:15:27.610Z
Answers.Text: Thanks – I had not tested out if that was the case. I should have clarified in my question that I am matching by primary email address, as the location type of the primary address will be different from contact to contact...
Answers.UserDisplayName: Markus Forsberg
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Answers.CreationDate: 2017-09-12T23:10:24.050Z
Answers.Text: I suspect importing to Primary is the issue. Since at that point it doesn't know which Location Type and hence doesn't match
Answers.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
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Answers.CreationDate: 2017-09-10T19:34:10.363Z
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Answers.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Body: <p>Is it possible to use the import function for contacts and match by email, without creating duplicate email addresses for existing contacts?</p>
  
  <p>Example:
  We organize frequent webinars with participation in the hundreds per event. After the webinar is over, we import the email addresses of those who  participated back from the webinar platform into CiviCRM, so that we can set their event status accordingly in CiviCRM. We don't have the CiviCRM IDs to import, so we need to do the matching by email. However, this seems to create a duplicate email record in matched contacts. This would not be much of an issue for the occasional import, but as many contacts have participated in dozens of webinars, they consequently also have dozens of email addresses in their CiviCRM record.</p>
  
  <p>Do you know if there is a way around this when importing? Both "Update" and "Fill" has the same problem. With "Skip", it says it has added the imported contacts to a group, but in fact it hasn't...</p>
  
  <p>Note: As our contacts will have different location types set for their primary email address, I am matching by primary address rather than a specific location type.</p>
  
Tags: <import><duplicate-contacts><data-import>
Title: Import – match to contact by email without creating duplicate email address
ThreadText: # Import – match to contact by email without creating duplicate email address
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2017-09-10)
  
  Is it possible to use the import function for contacts and match by email, without creating duplicate email addresses for existing contacts?
  
  Example:
  We organize frequent webinars with participation in the hundreds per event. After the webinar is over, we import the email addresses of those who participated back from the webinar platform into CiviCRM, so that we can set their event status accordingly in CiviCRM. We don't have the CiviCRM IDs to import, so we need to do the matching by email. However, this seems to create a duplicate email record in matched contacts. This would not be much of an issue for the occasional import, but as many contacts have participated in dozens of webinars, they consequently also have dozens of email addresses in their CiviCRM record.
  
  Do you know if there is a way around this when importing? Both "Update" and "Fill" has the same problem. With "Skip", it says it has added the imported contacts to a group, but in fact it hasn't...
  
  Note: As our contacts will have different location types set for their primary email address, I am matching by primary address rather than a specific location type.
  
  **Tags:** import, duplicate-contacts, data-import
  
  
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  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2017-09-10. Score: 2
  
  As far as I understand, provided you are importing to the same Location Type then the match should occur without adding a new email address.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_2**: Exactly - check if your location type matches  
  > **username_0**: Thanks – I had not tested out if that was the case. I should have clarified in my question that I am matching by primary email address, as the location type of the primary address will be different from contact to contact...  
  > **username_1**: I suspect importing to Primary is the issue. Since at that point it doesn't know which Location Type and hence doesn't match  
  
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