How to easily import data into Simple CRM?

Simple CRM now offers a new module for importing contacts and related companies. This new module has been designed for ease of use.

Warning: if you are working on Mac, you must, from the preparation of the file to import, work with the Libreoffice spreadsheet for Mac. Thank you for reading this article.

Import procedure

1) Prepare your data file, 1000 lines maximum per file, with LibreOffice necessarily. You can download LibreOffice for free.

Save the file in CSV format, UTF8 character set, comma separator (,), quote delimiter ("). See this page to see how to save the CSV file correctly.

2) Go to the module Admin (menu top -> Admin) and click on the tab "3.Import data", then on the button "Assisted import of companies and/or related contacts, in CSV format".

3) Click on the "Browse..." button and choose the CSV file to import.

Click on "Start file analysis".

Wait a few seconds, the contents of the file will appear below.

4) For each column whose data you want to import, choose the field into which the data will be imported.
You must assign a column to one of the fields "Contact - Name" or "Company - Name".

Areas of interest

To assign interests to imported contacts, your file must contain a column containing the interests to be associated with each contact, in the form of a comma-separated list.

For example: "Client,Southwest,Masonry" (without quotation marks) will associate the contact with the three indicated centers of interest.

To assign interests, associate the column containing the interests with the "Contact - Interests" field.

Contact-Company Links

If you want to assign a contact's business data, use the "Contact Company Link" fields at the bottom of the list.

To access all the columns in your data file, scroll the table to the right using the scroll bar at the bottom of the table. Duplicate management
In order to avoid the creation of duplicates, the import module first searches if the contact or the company already exists in the Simple CRM database.

For contacts, the identification is done on the "Contact - Personal Email" or "Company-contact - Pro Email" field.

For companies, identification is done in the order:
on the "Company - Num SIRET" field
in the'Company - VAT number' field
in the'Company - National identifier' field
on the fields "Company - Name", "Company - Postal Code", "Company - Place", i.e. a company is recognized if it has both the same name AND the same postal code AND the same place as an existing company in Simple CRM.


5) Once you have checked that the columns are correctly assigned to the Simple CRM fields, click on "Start import".
Attention, once this operation is done, you will not be able to go back or cancel the import.

A confirmation prompt appears, click Ok.

Wait a few seconds, until the import is done.
A confirmation message is displayed, with the count of the created and updated items.