In this tutorial you will import a small list of contacts from a CSV file. By the end you will have a handful of contact records in your workspace and you will know how to repeat the process for larger files later.
You will need:
- The Import permission on your workspace (if you don’t see Import in the sidebar, ask an administrator)
- A small CSV with a few rows of contacts — for this tutorial, four columns:
First Name,Last Name,Email Address,Phone
Tip: If you don’t have a file ready, create one in your spreadsheet tool with the four headers above and three or four made-up rows. Save as
.csv.
Step 1 — Open the wizard
Click Import in the sidebar.
You’ll see the import landing page, with the Start import button and a list of any past jobs.
Click Start import.
Step 2 — Upload your file
Drag your CSV onto the upload area, or click Choose file and select it.
Once uploaded, the file name appears. Click Next.
Step 3 — Choose what you’re importing
For this tutorial, leave the mode set to Single import and pick Contact as the entity type.
Click Next.
If you wanted to import several related entity types in sequence (e.g. organisations + contacts), you’d pick Pipeline instead — see Imports: single vs pipeline.
Step 4 — Map your columns
The wizard shows your CSV column names on the left and ThirdSectorBee fields on the right. Because your headers are descriptive, the wizard will already have guessed the right mappings:
| CSV column | Mapped to |
|---|---|
| First Name | First name |
| Last Name | Last name |
| Email Address | |
| Phone | Phone number |
If anything looks wrong, click the dropdown on the right and pick the correct field. Leave any column you don’t want to import set to Do not import.
Click Next.
Step 5 — Review and submit
You’ll see a summary of what’s about to happen — entity type, row count, and a preview of the first few rows.
Once submitted, the import cannot be cancelled.
Click Start import.
Step 6 — Watch it run
The wizard switches to a live status view: Rows processed, Rows succeeded, Rows failed. For a few rows this finishes almost immediately.
When it’s done, click Relationships → Contacts in the sidebar — your imported contacts will appear in the list.
You’ve imported your first file
From here:
- For a recurring file format, save your column mapping — see Save and reuse a column mapping
- For a more complex file with related entities, see Run a pipeline import
- For tips on preparing a real, larger file, see Prepare a CSV file