Working with CSV files can be a bit tricky. So we created this tutorial video showing you a few tips to make the process easier. It can take some time, but ultimately it is much faster to import data via CSV rather than manually entering info. So hang in there, this preliminary work is worth it. ☺

This tutorial is not comprehensive but gives you some tips for cleaning up a CSV file so that you can import it to SynkedUP.

Open your spreadsheet with your customer info. We're going to start by cleaning up the phone numbers. We need to remove all the extras from this column and trim it down to just the numbers - no hyphens, parentheses, words, etc.

There are multiple numbers for some customers. To fix that, we're going to create a second column. Right-click on the bar at the top of the sheet (the one where each column has a letter value), and choose Insert.

Click on the bar above the column with the phone numbers to select the whole column. Then go to Data on the main toolbar, and then click on Text to Columns.

This generates a popup. Select Delimited, then click on Next.

Choose Comma as your delimiter, then hit Next, and on the next popup, select Finish.

This process has created a separate column for secondary phone numbers. Your CSV file should now look something like this:

Now we're ready to get rid of the text in these columns. Let's start by hitting Ctrl F. This generates the Find and Replace popup. The first word we want to get rid of is "(home)". Type it into the Find what: field. We want to replace this with nothing, so we're going to leave the Replace with: field empty. Then hit Replace All.

This removed all the words "(home)" from the entire file. Your file should now have nothing where (home) was before.

Repeat this process for any other words that are in the phone numbers column, such as (mobile) or (work). If there's only one occurrence of a word you don't need to do the Find and Replace method. Just backspace them.

We also need to get rid of any hyphens or parentheses in the phone numbers.

Hit Ctrl F to open the Find and Replace dialog box again. Then enter ( in the Find what: field and hit Replace All.

Do this again with ) and - as well as an empty space. This leaves you with only digits, which is what we want.

Now we're ready to copy these phone numbers to our Import CSV file.

Note:

This file can be downloaded by going to System Setup > Import & Export in SynkedUP.

Click on the top cell and then hit Ctrl Shift and the down arrow to select all the cells in this column. Then hit Ctrl C or right-click on the column and select Copy.

Open your Import CSV file and click on the Phone_Home column. Either hit Ctrl V or right-click and select Paste.

You've now successfully copied all your customer's phone numbers to the new file. Repeat Copy and Paste for all the other relevant columns, such as first name, last name, address, etc.

Note:

All customers need to have an address and phone number. Any contacts that don't have this info will need to be deleted before you upload your CSV file to SynkedUP.

Let's go back to SynkedUP. Click on System Setup, then Import & Export.

Click on the Import from CSV button under the Customers bar.

Step 13:

Select your file and hit Open.

Note:

Make sure your file is a CSV file.

You should now get a success message that looks like this: