Export all data

Question

How do you export all data, for example, all data for organization records, or for person/individual records? I want to compare data from a database we just moved to Civi and make sure data came thru right (I know many didn't - missing or wrong, so I need to check without having to open every single record, one by one and comparing different sections of data. I'd prefer to compare in excel. I see you can filter/build a filter, and export data but you have to choose certain fields. Besides being very timeconsuming/tedious to choose each field,

1) over time the fields change (so you have to recreate the filter), and

2) the address field is making me choose a type (ex. address, home);

might do the same for phone field but I stopped creating filter/search and decided to see if it's possible to export all data/fields. I just want to do one easy export. It's been an unexpectedly difficult thing to find out how to do it or if it's possible. I have been searching online posts and Stack Exchange etc. for hours. Thanks so much.

Answer 1

In general the solution is to do your 'Search' then use the Export Contacts action, then use the "Select fields for export", and save that so you can use you "Saved Field Mapping".

Documentation on this is here

Answer 2

As Pete says, the documentation should be pretty clear. The usual way we do this when comparing imported data is to find all contacts, then export the data, and use a custom field mapping with fields that directly match your imported data. Save that field mapping and then it's very easy to repeat the data dump and directly compare your original data to the imported in excel. Note when you open and import the csv file in excel you should be sure that date fields are defined properly - otherwise they won't compare or sort properly.
The question of one to many for contact and addresses and phones can trip you up, depending on whether the original data had this one to many relationship. Depending on the complexity of the data, the flat file comparison in excel may not be completely straightforward. You will also note that the fields for organizations, households, and individuals are a bit different from each other. You may want to do three exports, for organizations, households, and individuals to minimize the confusion. And I'm sure that you know that you can edit the excel list, then re-import the contacts from that spreadsheet, being sure to choose "update existing contacts" and then having an unambiguous dedupe rule based on an internal or external id and not things like first/last/email which might be the corrections being made. Make sure to export the field that you plan to base your re- import on.