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If your WordPress site already has user accounts — perhaps from a previous membership plugin, a WooCommerce store, or manual account creation — this tool imports those users into the Church Admin directory without having to re-enter their details by hand.
What it does
The importer works through every WordPress user account on your site and checks whether each one already exists in the Church Admin directory by matching their email address. For each user:
- Not already in the directory — a new household and person record is created, linked to the existing WordPress account. The screen reports the user ID, name, and email of everyone added.
- Already in the directory — the existing record is left untouched. The screen confirms the user was found and skipped.
What data is imported
The importer pulls the following from each WordPress user account:
- First name and last name — taken from the WordPress user meta fields. If no last name is stored in user meta, the user’s nicename (the URL-friendly username) is used as a fallback.
- Email address — used both as the directory email field and as the matching key to detect existing records
- Registration date — the date the WordPress account was created is used as the first registered date in the directory
- WordPress user ID — the new person record is linked to the existing WordPress account, so login and directory entry are connected immediately
Default values applied to imported records
Because WordPress user accounts don’t hold the same range of information as a Church Admin directory entry, some fields are set to defaults on import:
- People type — set to Adult
- Member type — set to your first member type (typically Mailing List)
- Head of household — set to yes, as each imported user is placed in their own new single-person household
- Show on address list — set to no by default, so imported users are not immediately visible on the public-facing member directory
- GDPR reason — set to “Imported from website user account”
- Address — left blank; a new empty household is created for each person
Running the import
Go to Church Admin → People → Import users into directory. The import runs immediately — there is no preview step or confirmation prompt. The screen displays a line for each user processed, showing whether they were added or already existed.
The import is safe to run more than once — anyone already in the directory is detected by email address and skipped, so running it again after adding new WordPress users will only add the new ones.
After the import
Imported records will need some attention before they are fully useful:
- Add addresses — each person is imported into an empty household. Edit each household to add their address if you have it, or use the self-registration page to let them fill in their own details.
- Update member types — everyone is imported as the default member type. Review and update these to reflect each person’s actual relationship to the church.
- Check for people with the same address — if a couple both had WordPress accounts, they will have been imported as two separate single-person households. Once you have their addresses, you can consolidate them into a single household by editing the records manually.
- Run the directory issues checker — go to Church Admin → People → Check for directory issues after the import to catch any data gaps. See Check for directory issues.
- Review names — if any WordPress accounts didn’t have a proper last name stored, the nicename will have been used as a fallback. Check the imported records and correct any names that don’t look right.
When to use this vs CSV import
Use this tool when your existing congregation data lives in WordPress user accounts rather than a spreadsheet. If your data is in a spreadsheet or another system, the CSV import is a better starting point — see Import address list CSV. The two approaches can also be combined: import from users first to bring in anyone already with an account, then do a CSV import to add anyone who doesn’t have one.