Installing The Data Loader

The installation is very straightforward. Double-click the installer, next, next, ... Finish. I always just use the default installation path. Salesforce seems to update the data loader regularly. The version at the time of this writing is Version 13.

It is helpful to be familiar with where this is installed since you will need to know this when you start writing your scripts.

Here are the default directories that get installed

The samples directory is a good directory to poke around in to learn about some of the files that you will need to tweak in your custom integrations. In particular, reveiw the sample process-conf.xml file as this is where you setup the connections to salesforce (more on this in future posts).

It's also important to make a note of the encrypt.bat and process.bat files that are located in the bin folder.

You will use the process.bat file to reference the beans in the process-conf.xml file. And you will use the encrypt.bat file to create an encryption key and an encrypted password (more on these in a future post).

A couple of tips:

• Run As Install Works Fine- If you are attempting to install the dataloader on a computer while you are logged in as a restricted user (i.e. non admin) you can right click the installer and choose the Run As option and enter the administrator credentials. I've found this to be a nice time saver when I'm trying to roll this out on multiple computers.
• Multiple Versions are OK - You can have multiple versions of the dataloader installed on a single computer at the same time without any ill effects.

Dataloader Scripting Resources

I'm mostly focused on creating scripted solutions that can automate getting data in and out of Salesforce. So, that's going to be my focus with this blog. There may be other data integration solutions, however, the data loader is free and is supported by Salesforce.

I've spent a significant amount of time researching and fumbling around with this tool to get it to do what I want. And I hope that some of this information can help other people avoid some of the hair pulling that I went through.

You can download the latest version of the Data Loader by logging into Salesforce and clicking Setup > Data Management (under Administration Setup) > Data Loader

• Here is a link to the Data Loader Documentation (PDF)


• Here is a link with some good information from the developer's network


• Here is another person's account of using the Command Line Interface that I found very useful (PDF)

I'll add some more detailed posts with some code samples in the future...