How to find contacts with no group?

Question

I want to do some spring cleanup and see who in my individual contacts aren't in any group, is there an easy way to do it?

Answer 1

The best solution would be to use search builder like so:

However as Laryn noted there was a bug preventing this from working. I've filed an issue for this, and worked up a fix that hopefully will make it into the next release.

Answer 2

This is a workaround, but it will get what you need with minimal effort. Use the Import Contacts feature. On the first screen, choose Update. Instead of a CSV file as the source, use the SQL query option like so:

SELECT
    c.ID AS InternalContactID
FROM
    c9.civicrm_contact c
WHERE
    c.contact_type = 'Individual'
    AND NOT EXISTS (
        SELECT 1 FROM
        c9.civicrm_group_contact c2
        WHERE c2.contact_id = c.id)
    AND NOT EXISTS ( -- don't forget to check smart groups
        SELECT 1 FROM
        c9.civicrm_group_contact_cache c3
        WHERE c3.contact_id = c.id);

Map the field if it isn't already, and continue to the next screen. Here, you can add the contacts to a group or assign a tag. Click Import Now and you have a "No Group" group that your users can work with.

This technique with Import gives us a full-featured Search Builder for the SQL-savvy.

Answer 3

The easiest is probably to install the extension I just created, thanks to Nicholai magic sql suggestion:

https://civicrm.org/extensions/lonesome-find-contacts-without-group

Otherwise, the clunkier way I found is to use the custom search exclude/include and select every group in the exclude fields.

It works, with two issues still - it does include organisations (that are often without a group) - it's a bit of a pita to select all groups when you have more than a handful