I'm puzzled that there is no simple data migration tool included for this and that 3rd party is suggested. I must be missing something when it comes to exports/imports... I just want to move the data as-is, etc... It's the same system, 1 user... why so hard?
If I do an advanced find, for Accounts/Contacts and Activities... If I add all the columns for that entity and run an export to excel...
There are hidden fields that contain GUIDs in the first few columns that say 'don't modify'. These GUIDs are generated from the onpremise DB and if I am importing them into CRM Online, these GUIDS are useless and not needed... right? Trying to use these on import seems to make things choke.
My exported data for accounts, there are NO account numbers (blank). The accounts have 'Primary Contacts'...
Import process seems to choke on the fact that I can't import an account that has a Primary Contact because there are no contacts defined (yet).
My exported data for contacts, there are NO contact numbers. The contact has a Company Name (but no account number), trying to import them seems to mostly fail because it is trying to map contacts to accounts without luck. It seems like
My exported data for activities, there are NO contact numbers (or names) or Account numbers (or names). I haven't actually tried importing these yet due to the problems with Accounts/Activities needing to be solved first.
I read somewhere that creating a ZIP file with the contacts and activites inside, will allow it to process them both at the same time (allowing it to link the two), but this seems to fail as well.
I disabled duplicate checking, since I thought maybe it was fixing duplicates while importing and it wasn't able to link the two because the perfect isn't there any longer...
My patience is running low on what should be a simple task...
But basically, it seems there is no account,contact or activity ids that allow the linkage to happen. What am I missing? Is there a way to generate account/contact numbers and add those to the exports and use those as the matching key?