If a contact has an empty last name, I get this error upon import: Required value missing
Field Name Last Name: (last_name)
Value NULL
what is the way to import contacts like this?
Two possible ways:
- Set the field to not be required in Studio.
- When importing add a default to the field (on the right when mapping fields.) This will fill that default value when no data is provided.
Good luck.
Regards,
Sam
HNSC
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thanks the first one works for me.
I know it’s a (very) old thread, but just wanted to ask whether there any issues may arise in the future from making the Last name field optional?
In other words, why is Last name set to requried by default?
(If any field should be required during import, I would say it’s Email address field , or make all of them optional).
My convern is that removing this requirement may break something in other modules 
Please advise!
The field is using as a index in database. You can disable the requirement but it will be problem in SuiteCRM interface if user doesn’t fill in the field.
You can set requried fields manually.
Thank you for the response!
I found how the requirement can be lifted. Also, I’ve learned that (via UI) the last name may be set to optional either for Import or for manual entry, but not both at the same time.
Would you please share a bit more on why would there be any need to index (or search) by last name, and what kind of problems may we face if we import nameless contacts (targets) into the system?
As I indestand you don’t interest for the duplicate records.
You will not have fatal problem if the field last_name will be empty. Main problem will be with search functions.
Of course I don’t want duplicate records, but last name is not a good criterion for checking for duplicates 
From my perspective, it is email address that must be required to be unique, not the last name.
One could argue that one person may have multiple different email addresses, but it’s fine - one email still uniquely matches to a single profile, even though that profile may have multiple emails matched to it. I bet this has been discussed many times here or internally in the devs team, so I’m gonna stop right here 
So far I haven’t had issues caused by empty last names, and I hope it stays that way 
In any case, thanks a lot for all the input!
A few comments:
- Unique identification for people are combination - First name, (Patronymic - option), Last name, Birth date, Birth place. I understand that information about birth is rarely available.
- You can use module Leads for load duplicate records with differents email address of the same person. After that when you will begin to work with the records to merge them into one Contact.
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