Contact Viewer - Import/Export Contacts

Arclab® MailList Controller

Basics:

group  Open the Contact Viewer

 

Select the list and click on "Edit Contacts" (or double-click on the list):

 

Contact Viewer

 

  • The contact viewer shows all contacts for the selected list.
  • The contact viewer shows up to 1000 contacts at a time.
  • You can browse through the contacts using "First 1000", "Previous 1000" and "Next 1000".
  • The first column contains the email address, which identifies the contact.
  • The program does not accept duplicate email addresses within a list, so you don't need to care about duplicates.
  • The next columns contain status information like "Date", "Status" or "Messages received".
  • The field "Date" contains the date an user subscribed, unsubscribed or a message returned.
  • All other columns contain custom fields for personalization.

group Contact Status

 

Mailings will be sent to contacts with status "Subscriber" only!
Each list has its own contacts, so a contact can be a subscriber of a list, even if the contact has unsubscribed from a second list.

 

Each Contact has a "Status":

  • Subscriber: The contact is active and will receives mailings (e.g. your newsletter) from the list.
  • Unsubscriber: The contact has sent a remove request and will not receive future mailings from the list.
  • Returned: A message sent to the contact has returned, e.g. invalid email address
  • Pending: The user has not confirmed the double opt-in subscribe request yet.

group Add, Edit and Delete Contacts

 

Please note, that there is a fundamental difference between a mailing list and a linked list.

A linked list is linked to an external database, so that you cannot add/delete recipients directly in the contact viewer - you can change the "Status" only
(use the database application used to create the external database instead).

 

The following screenshot shows the difference between a mailing list and a linked list:
(the same sample data is used, but the edit options are different depending on the list type)

 

Mailing List and Linked List

 

Open the list and select the contact(s) you want to change ...

  • Click on the "Edit" icon or right-click on a contact and select "Edit Contact" from the menu.
  • You can also edit/delete multiple contacts, e.g. hold down "Ctrl" on the keyboard and select multiple contacts.

 

How to delete All list contacts without deleting the list?

  • "Database" > "Delete all Contacts (complete List)" deletes all records from the list, not only the selected or visible and should be used with caution!
  • This action cannot be undone and will delete ALL list contacts.

group Import Contacts

 

Use "Import" to import contacts to an existing list. It makes no difference if the list already contains contacts or not.
Please note: The program will not accept duplicate email addresses.

 

Go to the section "Mailing Lists", select the list and click on "Import" (or click on "Import" in the contact viewer)

 

Import Contacts

 

MailList Controller can import MS Access files with the extension *.mdb and *.accdb.

 

MailList Controller can import MS Excel files *.xls, *.xlsm, *.xlsb and *.xlsx.

Important: Make sure the first line (row) of the MS Excel sheet contains the field names!

 

MailList Controller can import data from ODBC data sources like e.g. MySQL:
It is required that an ODBC driver for the data source is installed on the computer (when using ODBC).
See also: Import contacts from a web CRM or shop system (MySQL)

 

MailList Controller can import text files (CSV format):

The plain text .csv (comma separated values) file should have:

  • Column names (field names) in the first line
  • One record in each line
  • Fields divided by a comma (,)

 

Sample text file format:

Email,Name
support@yourdomain.tld, Support
office@yourdomain.tld, Office

or

"Email","Name"
"support@yourdomain.tld","Support"
"office@yourdomain.tld","Office"

group Export Contacts

 

Go to the section "Mailing Lists", select the list and click on "Export" (or click on "Export" in the contact viewer)

 

Export Contacts

 

The program exports to MS Access and CSV (Comma Separated Values) files:

  • If you select CSV, then the export file will only contain a single table.
  • Click on "Select File Path" and select the path and filename.
  • Click on "Finish" to start the export process.

 

Please note: You can export subscribers only when using a "Mailing List".
A "Linked List" is linked to an external database, so the subscribers are not stored inside the program and cannot be exported.

 

CSV File Sample:

"AMLC_EMAIL","AMLC_STATUS","Name","Custom1","Custom2","Custom3"
"demo@arclab.com","0","Alfred","Mustermann","Musterstadt","Germany"

 

Contact Status:

AMLC_STATUS contains the contact status information:

  • 0 = Subscriber
  • 1 = Unsubscriber
  • 2 = Returned
  • 3 = Pending (double opt-in request was not confirmed yet)