How do I format my spreadsheet of Contacts for importing?

Keeping track of all the digital properties in your enterprise often requires knowing all the people who are helping manage those properties. This means managing a potentially large and ever-changing list of contacts to associate with your domains, websites, and especially with your social media points-of-presence (POPs) and ad accounts.

An easy way to add new or update existing Contacts is to import them via a spreadsheet. You can do this via our spreadsheet import option from the Tools menu. First, however, you'll need to make sure your data is in a form that the system can interpret accurately.

Structure and Format

Your spreadsheet should look something like this:

Rules

The first row of the spreadsheet should be a row of headers defining what to expect in the column:

1. Organization - If you are associating Contacts with Divisions/Orgs in your enterprise (e.g. DBAs), you will want to use this field to make that association. [Optional]
2. First Name - The person's first name. [Optional but recommended]
3. Last Name -The person's first name. [Optional but recommended]
4. Email Address - The person's primary email address, which must be unique. [Either Email Address or ID is required]
5. ID - A unique identifier (e.g. employee or license #) for the person. [Either Email Address or ID is required]
6. TAG: <Tag Category> - The tags from <Tag Category> which are to be applied to this Contact. Each Tag Category (e.g. Brand, Division, Region, Country, etc.) must be in a different column. Multiple tags in a cell must be separated by semi-colons (;). Any references to an undefined Tag Category will result in the Tag Category being created. If there was a problem creating the Tag Category, the file will be rejected. Any references to an undefined Tag will result in the Tag being created. If there was a problem creating a Tag, the row will be returned to you indicating which Tag(s) were problematic.
7. Note - Any text you want to add to the Contact as a note. Any note added via CSV import will have the prefix "This note was created from a spreadsheet import" added to it.

To import a spreadsheet, choose the "Import Contacts" option from the "Tools" menu. In the window that comes up, you can download an Excel document to use as a template.

Once you have your spreadsheet in the proper format, you'll need to export or save it to a comma-separated values (CSV) format. Note that if your file contains international characters (e.g ñ, ü, ç, etc.), be sure to choose the export file type "CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (.csv)" - see image below. If you have an older version of Excel or use a different spreadsheet application, you might have to choose a different option, which might be tab-delimited, but it should be in UTF-8 format.

Process

Here is the process the import will follow once you select your file and choose "Import":

1. Your file will be sent to the server and the headers analyzed.
2. The system will confirm that the required columns (Email Address or ID) are present. If any are missing, the whole spreadsheet will be rejected.
3. Next, it will evaluate the Tag Categories identified in the headers. If an unknown Tag Category is found, it will be created.
4. If no errors are found in the header row, the server will begin processing each Contact row.
5. If any row is missing a value for a required column (Email Address or ID), the row will be rejected and copied to a new CSV file that will be returned to you at the end of the import process.
6. Any row that is not immediately rejected will be sent to a background server for processing and the Contact should be created or updated.
7. If the contact already exists and is thus being updated, any value from the spreadsheet that is different from the contacts current value will be updated; this includes changes in case (e.g. jane.smith@company.com vs. Jane.Smith@company.com).
8. If the Contact could not be created or updated or a Tag could not be applied the row will be copied to a new CSV file to be returned to you at the end of the import process. Note, that even if a Tag cannot be applied, the Contact still will be created, if possible.
9. Once all of the rows have been processed by the background servers, the system will send you an email informing you of the results. If any row was rejected or a Contact could not be created or any Tag could not be applied, the email will contain a CSV file containing just the rows that had issues.

The Contact import process is generally additive, meaning you may import any particular row multiple times to add additional information to a Contact. The Email Address or the ID is the key identifier for a Contact. The ID, Email Address, First Name, and Last Name values provided in the last import (or last row processed if a Contact is listed more than once in your spreadsheet – it happens!) are the values that will persist. Tags will only be added to a Contact; if a Contact already has a Tag not listed in the row being imported it will not be removed. If the same Note is imported more than once, the note will be applied multiple times.

Note: Since the rows are handed off to multiple background servers for processing, there is no guarantee that the rows will be processed in the order they are listed in the file. If a Contact is listed more than once it may not be the last instance in the file that defines the final values of the Contact.

If the import process returned a CSV file back to you, each row will have two additional columns added to it titled: Rejected Tags, Other Errors. Use the values in these columns to edit the other values in the row and resubmit. Note, we return the Notes column back to you, so you may want to delete this column before resubmitting unless you want the note to be applied a second time.

See Also

• Contacts
• Tags
• Tag Categories