set multiple previously owned contacts to no owner

[EBrake]

A sales team member is leaving our team for the first time since we installed HubSpot. I have reassigned all of his companies to new owners, and many of his contacts have also been reassigned. However, this are ~160 contacts that will not receive new owners. Therefore the owner field should be blank.

I thought that if I left the field blank in my import file for those contacts that the blank field would overwrite the existing data. However that did not happen. The old owner is still associated with the record. (I know the import worked because the new owners were all successfully assigned in the same process.)

How can I remove contact owner designations and leave the field blank via import?

Thank you!

[lcoburn]

Is there a way to do this if you want to do it via import?  I have tried changing the data point to "No Owner" in the import sheet, and the import interface flags it as an error that I can either ignore or bulk change to a specific user, but "No Owner" is not an option in the import interface.

[lcoburn]

@karstenkoehler , can you comment on this?  Is it possible via import, if you would like to do so?  We have several custom properties with User values for each contact record, so doing all of them via the UI takes a lot of additional steps.  Removing an owner via import is much more efficient for us.

[Victor_Becerra]

Hey @lcoburn, I checked on my own system and with @karstenkoehler  documentation and found this:

Is not possible right now to clear an existing HubSpot Owner via import (there’s no valid “No owner” / blank value in the import mapping, which is why the file flags it as an error). Instead, this is what you can do:
Go to Contacts > Contacts.
Use the filters for Contact owner and select all those that are from [departing rep].
Select all the records you want (you can click on “Select all” at the top of the list).
 

1. Click Assign at the top, then choose No owner in the owner list.

That will bulk remove the owner and leave the field blank, which is what're trying to do in the CSV.
 

Let me know if it helps!
Best, Victor

[lcoburn]

Thanks for commenting, @Victor_Becerra .  I appreciate any clarification, even if it's the type of answer that nobody wants: the system can't do it.  It helps me know that I should stop trying 🙂

The issue with the solution provided is that the use case is too narrow.  Removing ownership can happen for a lot of different reasons, not just that a single rep is departing.

For example, our business changed its business practices so that contact records that used to have owners are now unowned.  This affects all records and the reps that used to own them still work for the company and have retained the majority of their owned contact records.  So, I need to handle this the way I handle all data changes like this: import.  

To additionally complicate it in our use case, we have tiered assignments on the Contact level, so that we can communicate to our customer base by sending email "from" people in different leadership structure above them.  All of these fields need to have the capacity of changing from an existing Owner to a status of having No Owner.  Again: solution is import.

I can work around this by segmenting my list several ways, doing several imports, then bulk-changing everyone on each list through the UI...I get that.  But, it's obviously a lot more difficult than just having HubSpot recognize "No Owner" or some other reserved value that removes the ownership via import.

Again, thanks for your comment.  Systems can't do everything.  just trying to highlight that people use these systems in thousands of different ways, so while it may be easy to remove ownership in a "normal" use case, it doesn't really work in other contexts.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @EBrake,

Just to summarize, there are contacts who still have the contact owner assigned that have left the company and you want to clear it?

If so, you don't need an import here. Simply make the change directly in the HubSpot user interface: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/how-to-set-an-owner#assign-an-owner-from-the-object-s-index-...

On Menu > Contacts > Contacts, filter for contacts assigned to this user, then use the Assign button to assign them to no one:

Best regards!

[Ohska]

@karstenkoehler - What to do when you have thousends of records to assign? through the inteface it can take ages. what am I missing? 

I need to reassign to "no owner" 4.5k companies

[EBrake]

Thank you! I thought I would have to do them 1 at a time via the interface, so this was helpful.