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Import your people from a spreadsheet (CSV)

If you already keep your congregation in a spreadsheet or another church tool, you can bring everyone in at once instead of adding people one at a time. Churchday walks you through four steps: Upload, Map fields, Review, and Import.

Before you begin

  • You need permission to add people to your church.
  • Have your list ready as a spreadsheet file (CSV). Churchday reads .csv files only, not Excel .xlsx files. Most spreadsheet apps can save or export as CSV.

Step-by-step

  1. Go to the People page. Open People from the dashboard.
  2. Click Add people, then Upload CSV. The Add people button is at the top right. Choosing Upload CSV opens the Import people page.
  3. Upload your file. Drag your .csv file onto the drop zone, or click it to browse. Files can be up to 50 MB. Not sure how your columns should look? Use the Download CSV template link for a ready-made layout.
  4. Map your fields. Churchday reads your column names and matches them automatically. Recognized fields include First Name, Last Name, Email, Mobile Phone, Home Phone, Work Phone, Birthday, Gender, Marital Status, street address, city, state, ZIP, Household ID, Household Name, Household Primary, and Tags. Confirmed matches sit under Auto-matched; anything it couldn't place lands under Unmapped. Open the dropdown beside any column to pick the right field, or choose Skip column to leave it out.
  5. Click Continue to Review. You can move on once at least one name column and one contact column (email or phone) are mapped.
  6. Review the results. The summary cards show Total rows, Ready to import, Warnings, Errors (will skip), and Households. An issue breakdown lists each problem by type. Turn on Show problems only to see just the rows that need attention, and click any Name or Email cell in the preview table to fix it right there.
  7. Set your import options. Choose how to handle any duplicates (Skip duplicates or Update existing), pick the Membership for this batch, and confirm the Email & text opt-in channels these people agreed to. You can also add a tag to the whole batch for easy filtering later.
  8. Click Import. The button reads Import [number] Contacts. When it finishes, you'll see how many people were created, updated, and skipped.

Good to know

  • Every person needs a name or an email, plus a way to reach them. A row must have a name or an email address, and it must have an email, a phone number, or a link to a household. Rows missing both a name and an email are marked as errors and skipped.
  • Household-only rows come in for grouping. If a row has a household link but no email or phone of its own, it still imports so you can build the family, but that person won't receive email or text campaigns until you add a contact channel.
  • No spreadsheet? Paste a list of emails instead. On the upload step, use Paste email addresses to drop in addresses separated by commas, spaces, or one per line (up to 20,000 at a time). This skips the mapping step and adds everyone as subscribers, so you can fill in names and details later.
  • Coming from Planning Center? Expand Importing from Planning Center? on the upload step. Export your list from Planning Center as a CSV and Churchday auto-detects its columns for you.
  • Save your problem rows. If some rows have warnings or errors, use Download issues CSV to get a file of just those rows, fix them in your spreadsheet, and import again.

What's next?

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