Import customer data with id

Hi,
is there any option to import customers with there existing ID number, with the import tool in the UI?
when I try it, to enter a cust id in the excel file, it will be ignored by import.

Import direct in the sql DB works.
If there is no way to import the existing cust IDs with the excel sheet, is it a bad idea to import the data direct in the DB? (will it make problems in the future?)

Best regards,
Matthias

The Customer name is the primary key of Customer record in ERPNext. We don’t have Customer ID. You can put your existing IDs in the name column and they will be imported, but you won’t get the Customer name in Link fields.

posting here as it is related:

A scenario using the new Data import tool.
trying to import old historical transactional data.
the trick is I manually gave it an ID that respects the naming series.
but the import tool negleted that ID and added it’s own ID to the record.
anyway to force the ID from the Google Spreadsheet?

@netchampfaris

The same is happening to me, have you found a way to force ID?

Well,
The trick is that the “Data import tool” first checks if the DocType being imported is named based on prompt or naming series etc…

It defaults to the value in the ID column if the DocType is named based on prompt.

I created an issue for this:

@Mina_Ezzat I don’t see how naming could be changed to prompt (as a non-developer).

Since the issue seems to be pretty current and unsolved - would a direct import into the database be an option, so totally circumventing any ERPNext functionality?

Sorry for the delayed response.

well, I do it in daunting way.

1- Enable developer_mode
2- Edit the Doctype you are about to import data to → change the Auto-name field to “Prompt”
3- do the data import
4- then reset the Auto-Name field back to it’s previous value.