Importing contacts

Import lives on the Contacts tab, and brings a list in as either leads or clients. The Clients tab has its own Import button for when you already know the rows are clients.

Start with the sample

The import panel offers a Download sample CSV. It is a working file, not a picture of one: fill in your own rows, import it back, and every column will be recognised without you touching a single dropdown. It is the fastest way to see the shape the dashboard expects.

Two ways in

• Choose a CSV file.
• Or paste rows straight from a spreadsheet into the box.

The first row should be your column headers.

Matching your columns (column mapping)

As soon as the file is read, you get a row for every field the dashboard can fill, each with a dropdown of your columns, so you can map each spreadsheet header to the field it belongs in. Common headers are matched for you — Full Name, Company Name, E-Mail and Phone Number all find their place — and you can re-point any of them by hand.

Anything you leave as Don't import is ignored, and any column of yours that has nowhere to go is listed underneath so you know it was seen and skipped rather than silently dropped.

Which fields are available

The list changes with what you are importing, because the two records hold different things.

Switching between Leads and Clients re-matches your columns against the new list, unless you have already made choices worth keeping.

Before you commit

A preview shows the first few rows exactly as they will be written. Nothing is saved until you press Import.

You must match at least one of Contact name or Business name. A row with neither cannot be identified, so Import stays disabled and says so — while you can still fix it.

Rows that already exist

Before anything is written, the file is checked against what is already in your workspace, and against earlier rows in the same file. A row counts as a match when its email or its phone number matches one already there. Phone numbers are compared on their last ten digits, so +1 (812) 555-0101 and 812.555.0101 are recognised as the same number.

If there are matches, you are asked what to do with them before the import runs:

• Skip them — the default. The existing record is left exactly as it is.
• Update the existing record with what the file has — for refreshing details from a newer export.
• Add them anyway, as new records — when the match is a coincidence, such as a shared office phone number.

The count of matches, new rows and unusable rows is shown before you commit, so you can go back and fix the file instead if the numbers look wrong.

Afterwards

You are told how many were added, how many were updated, and how many were not added. Every row that was not added is listed with the reason, and Download the report (CSV) saves that list with the original row numbers and contents, so you can correct those rows and import just them.

Imports are recorded in the Activity Log.

If an import is interrupted

Rows are sent in batches, not all at once. If the connection drops or something fails part way, the panel tells you which row it stopped at and that everything before it is saved. Continue picks up from the batch that failed.

Continuing is safe to do more than once. Each run carries its own id, and a batch that already landed is recognised and not written again, so a retry cannot double up your contacts.

The one thing to know: this works while the import panel is still open. If you close it or reload the page part way through, the progress is gone, and re-importing the same file is the way to finish — choose Skip them for the matches, and only the rows that never arrived are added.

There is no limit on how many rows a file may have. The batches are 250 rows each, and the count in the panel tells you how far along it is.

Getting your contacts back out

The Contacts tab has an Export CSV button. It exports what the Show filter is set to, so "Leads only" exports leads and "Everything" exports both, with the columns the dashboard holds.

It is worth taking one before a large import, so you have the previous state on disk. Note that an export is a copy, not an undo: it will not remove rows a later import added.