Importing your spreadsheet without bringing the mess

Preparing the file

A good import starts in Excel, not in the CRM. Four things, and together they take twenty minutes:

1. One row is one thing. A row per company, or a row per contact — not both mixed together. If two contacts are in one cell, split them out first.
2. One column is one piece of information. "Jansen Ltd, Bristol" in a single cell has to become two columns. An import screen can't guess that for you.
3. The top row is the headings, with nothing above it. A title, a logo or a blank line above your headings will make the import read your first customer as a column name.
4. Strip out formatting that carries meaning. A yellow background that means "important" won't come across. Turn it into a column with the word in it, or you'll lose that information when you save.

CSV, and the separator trap

Most systems want a CSV: a text file where the columns are separated by a character. Which character depends on your computer's regional settings, and that catches people out more than anything else on this page.

On a UK machine Excel writes a comma and reads the full stop as the decimal point: `2000.50`. On a Dutch or German machine it's the other way round — a semicolon separates and the comma is the decimal point: `2000,50`. Both files are valid CSV; neither opens properly on the other side.

So if an import looks strange — everything in one column, or amounts a thousand times too big — the separator is almost always the reason. Most import screens let you set it, and a good one tells you which one it detected.

Save as *CSV UTF-8* if the option is there. That prevents the classic fault where accented letters and the pound sign turn into unreadable characters — and you only notice that once a thousand rows are already in.

Five mistakes that make an import useless

• Phone numbers stored as numbers. Excel strips the leading zero, and then 07700 900123 becomes 7700900123. Set the column to text before you save.
• Dates in US format. 03/04/2026 is 3 April here and 4 March there, and a file that came out of an American system will be in the second. Check one date you know after the import.
• The same customer under two names. "Jansen Ltd" and "Jansen Limited" become two companies. Sort by name and look at it before you import, not after.
• Mapping empty columns anyway. You end up with a hundred blank fields that look as though something should have been in them. Only map what's actually filled in.
• Importing twice after a failure. The most common mistake of all: the first attempt half worked, and the second duplicates everything. Check whether the system has a preview first.

Look at what's going to happen first

An import screen that shows you what it's about to do before it does it is the difference between a quiet afternoon and an evening of tidying up. Check whether a new product has that.

If it doesn't, make your own trial: import five rows, check everything landed in the right place, and then do the rest. That costs five minutes and saves you the situation where a thousand companies have their town in the phone number field.

After the import

Two checks, both done in five minutes. Count whether the number of companies matches the number of rows in your file — if it's short, rows were skipped and you want to know which. And open three companies at random to see whether the fields landed in the right places.

And then the part that counts: put a next step with a date on the opportunities that are live. An imported file with no next steps is an address list, not a CRM.