Import and export users and customers

About this plugin

Questions

I get a “too many redirects” error on my site, how can I solve it?

This is caused by the option that forces the users to reset their password. When it is used, each of those users is redirected to their password page on every page load until they change it, and if that destination cannot be reached (for example, because wp-admin is blocked for customers or subscribers by WooCommerce, by a membership plugin or by a security plugin) the browser ends up in a redirection loop.

Since version 2.4.12 the plugin detects this situation and gives up after 3 consecutive redirects, so the site stays usable, but you can also clear the flag for the users that are already affected: go to the plugin documentation tab and use the button that removes the force reset password metadata from all the users.

If you want to change how many redirects are allowed before the plugin gives up, use the acui_force_reset_password_max_redirects filter (return 0 to disable the limit):

add_filter( 'acui_force_reset_password_max_redirects', function( $max ){ return 5; } );

Which page are the users sent to when I force them to reset their password?

By default they are sent to their WordPress profile page. If WooCommerce or WP User Manager are active, they are sent to the password section of the account page of those plugins instead. You can point them anywhere else using the acui_force_reset_password_edit_profile_url filter, and you can add your own exceptions (pages where the redirection must not happen) using acui_force_reset_password_redirect_condition.= Can I import users from an Excel or LibreOffice file? =

The plugin natively supports CSV files. If you need to import directly from Excel (XLSX, XLS) or LibreOffice (ODS) files without converting them first, the File Formats Addon adds support for those formats.

What format should my CSV file be?

You should fill the first two columns with the next values: Username, Email.

The next columns are totally customizable and you can use whatever you want. All rows must contains same columns. User profile will be adapted to the kind of data you have selected. If you want to disable the extra profile information, please deactivate this plugin after make the import.

Can I import users by their WordPress ID?

You can use a column called id in order to make inserts or updates of an user using the ID used by WordPress in the wp_users table. We have two different cases:

• If id doesn’t exist in your users table: WordPress core does not allow us insert it, so it will throw an error of kind: invalid_user_id
• If id exists: plugin check if username is the same, if yes, it will update the data, if not, it ignores the cell to avoid problems

Passwords

We can use a column called “Password” to manage a string that contains user passwords. We have different options for this case:

• If you don’t create a column for passwords: passwords will be generated automatically
• If you create a column for passwords: if cell is empty, password won’t be updated; if cell has a value, it will be used

Serialized data

Plugin can import serialized data. You have to use the serialized string directly in the CSV cell in order the plugin will be able to understand it as an serialized data instead as any other string.

Lists

Plugin can import lists as an array. Use this separator: :: two colons, inside the cell in order to split the string in a list of items.

WordPress default profile data

You can use those labels if you want to set data adapted to the WordPress default user columns (the ones who use the function wp_update_user)

• user_nicename: A string that contains a URL-friendly name for the user. The default is the user’s username.
• user_url: A string containing the user’s URL for the user’s web site.
• display_name: A string that will be shown on the site. Defaults to user’s username. It is likely that you will want to change this, for both appearance and security through * obscurity (that is if you don’t use and delete the default admin user).
• nickname: The user’s nickname, defaults to the user’s username.
• first_name: The user’s first name.
• last_name: The user’s last name.
• description: A string containing content about the user.
• jabber: User’s Jabber account.
• aim: User’s AOL IM account.
• yim: User’s Yahoo IM account.
• user_registered: Using the WordPress format for this kind of data Y-m-d H:i:s.