If your contacts live in a spreadsheet or another CRM, export them as a CSV and bring them in here. You see what will happen to every row before anything is written, and you can undo the whole import afterwards.
Before you start
- You need to be an owner, admin or manager.
- Save your file as a CSV with a header row. One import can take up to 5,000 rows.
- Import people and companies as separate files. To say who works where, either add a company column to your people file, or import a relationships file afterwards.
Import your file
- Go to Contacts, open the menu next to New contact, and choose Import from CSV.
- Under What are you importing?, choose People, Companies or Relationships.
- Drop your CSV onto the page, or select the box to choose it.
- Under Match the columns, check what each column will be imported as. 53° matches the headers it recognises. Set anything you don't want to Don't import.
- Answer the questions below the columns:
- Where did these come from? Every contact needs a source. If your file has a Source column, this question becomes Source for rows that don't name one.
- How are dates written? Only shown if you're importing dates of birth.
- Lifecycle for new records: Only shown if your file has no lifecycle column.
- If someone's already here: see below.
- Assign new contacts to me: on by default, as when you add a contact yourself. Rows that name their own owner go to that person instead. If your file has an owner column, this reads Assign new contacts without an owner to me.
- Choose Check the file.
- Review the list. Each row shows what will happen: New, Update, Already here or Can't import, with the reason. Choose Skip on any row you want to leave out.
- Choose Import. The button shows how many rows will go in.
What you can import
For people: Id, External id, Title, First name, Last name, Full name, Email, Phone, Date of birth, Address line 1, Address line 2, City, Region, Postcode, Country, Website, Lifecycle, Marketing opt-in, Tags, Source, Assigned to (email), Notes, Company they work at and Job role.
For companies: the same, with Company name in place of the name fields and no date of birth or company columns.
A few things worth knowing:
- A person needs a first and last name (or a full name) and an email. A company needs a name.
- A Full name is split as a form's automation splits one: a title at the start ("Dr Ada Lovelace") fills in the title when your file has no Title column, the last name keeps words like "van" and "Jr", and "Lovelace, Ada" is read surname first. It's used only for rows with no first or last name.
- Company they work at finds the company by name, or creates it once however many rows name it, then links the person to it.
- Put several tags in one cell, separated by semicolons or commas. Tags you don't have yet are created.
- Marketing opt-in reads yes/no, true/false or 1/0. A blank cell leaves the contact opted out.
- The file's lifecycle must match one of the lifecycle stages, such as Lead or Customer. Anything else is flagged, and the row gets the default.
- Source must match one of your sources by name (capitals don't matter). A source you don't have is flagged, and the row uses the one you chose. The import never creates sources; an owner or admin can add them in settings first.
- Assigned to (email) must be the email of someone in your organisation. Anyone else is flagged, and the contact isn't assigned to them.
- Notes go on the contact's Notes tab, one paragraph per line.
What happens to duplicates
53° checks every row against your contacts, looking for the same Id, External id, email, phone or exact name, in that order. It also checks against earlier rows in the same file, and marks a repeated row Already here.
Under If someone's already here, choose:
- Leave the existing record alone: the row is skipped. This is the default.
- Fill in anything it's missing: the row fills in blank fields on the existing contact, including its owner and notes. It never overwrites something already there, and Assign new contacts to me doesn't apply to existing contacts.
- Import anyway, and flag it as a duplicate: a new contact is created, and you can review it later under Duplicates.
Import relationships
Choose Relationships to link people and companies that already exist. Each row needs a person (Person id or Person email) and a company (Company id or Company name). You can add a Job role, Work email and Work phone. A pair that's already linked is skipped.
Undo an import
When the import finishes, choose Undo this import. This deletes the contacts it created, including companies it created along the way, and clears the fields it filled in on existing contacts.