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You can bring your list into DealToaster from a CSV file. The import has four steps, and nothing is imported until you have reviewed the rows. This page walks through each step and explains the report.

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Before you start

  • Export your list from your spreadsheet as a CSV file with one row per person and a header row.
  • One column must hold the email address.
  • The upload step shows the current size and row limits for a file. If your file is larger, split it and import the parts one by one.
  • DealToaster detects the file’s encoding and delimiter (comma, semicolon, tab or pipe). You can change the delimiter in the next step if the detection is wrong.
  • The upload step links Download a sample CSV, a small file that shows the format.
Open Contacts and select Import CSV.

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The four steps

1

Upload

Drop a CSV file on the page or choose one. Nothing is imported yet.
2

Map

DealToaster suggests a field for each column. Check the suggestions:
  • Exactly one column must go to Email.
  • The other fields you can map to are First name, Last name, Company, Job title, Phone, LinkedIn URL, Website, City and Country.
  • Set a column to Ignore this column to leave it out, or to Custom field to keep it under a name of your own. A custom field name uses lower-case letters, digits and _, and starts with a letter.
  • If the columns look wrong, change the Delimiter or untick First row is a header.
  • Columns with unknown headers are suggested as custom fields; the headers status, last_replied_at and created_at of a contacts export start as Ignore this column, and you can still map them.
  • If no column goes to Email, the page says “Choose the column that holds the email address.”
  • To pick a different file, select Choose another file.
The page shows the review counts as soon as one column goes to Email.
3

Review

The counts add up to the rows in the file:Select the button that reads “Import” followed by the number of contacts, for example “Import 120 contacts”, to start. Keep the page open for the few seconds it takes. Use Back to change the mapping first.
4

Report

The report shows Imported, Skipped, Errors and Rows in the file. Select View imported contacts to see them in Contacts, or Import another file to start again.

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Read the report

When some rows were not imported, the report says “The rows below were skipped or rejected; nothing else was changed.” The list gives the Row (the row number as your spreadsheet shows it), the Column, the Reason and the Value for each row, marked Error or Skipped. Select Download errors (CSV) to save the list. When every row was imported, the page says “Every row was imported.” Every row is counted: the rows in the file always equal the imported, skipped and error rows together, and none is dropped silently. The list keeps the first 100 problem rows and says so; the counts above it cover all of them. The list is kept for a limited time after the import; the counts stay.

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How rows are treated

  • An address counts once, whatever its capitalization. A repeat in the file is skipped.
  • A contact you already have is skipped and left unchanged. The import never updates existing contacts.
  • Values are stored as text. If a value begins with an apostrophe followed by =, +, -, @, a tab or a carriage return, the apostrophe is removed. That is how DealToaster writes values in the files it creates (the contacts export and the errors file), so that a spreadsheet never runs them as formulas; a file you export imports back as it was.

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When the file is refused

A file-level problem stops the import on the first step with a message, for example:
  • the file is not text, is empty or has no data rows;
  • the file is larger than the limit or has more rows than the limit, with the advice to split it into smaller files.