Exporting Contacts
All phone numbers or information added to your Contacts database can be downloaded or exported into a single file in Excel, PDF or CSV format.
Making changes to existing contacts can be done easily by editing via spreadsheet application (e.g. Excel), then upload the updated version and you’ll see the changes populate in the Contacts page. With the spreadsheet file, you can create charts and graphs for presentations, manipulate the data for reporting purposes, or segment and further analyze the contact’s profiles.
How to download all contacts
1. Click on the ‘select all’ checkbox beside Phone Number header on the Contacts page.
2. Make sure to select all contacts by clicking the blue-highlighted option: Would you like to select all ‘123‘ contacts?
By default, only the first 30 contacts are selected unless you load and select more contacts by batches of 30. The notification highlighted in blue will appear just above the column headers and will show how many contacts has been selected and the total number of contacts found in your database.
3. Once all contacts are selected, click Download and choose the file format you’d like to export the data into. We recommend Excel.
4. Wait for the system to process your download and you’ll see a notification message highlighted in green at the topmost part of the page. Click on Download Contacts to export the file to your computer.
You may open and edit the downloaded file. It will contain all columns found in the Contacts page and will include the Contacts Id (column A) and Groups (column B) which shows which group the contacts belong to if any.
Download contacts by group
To download only the contacts included in a particular group, select a Group name on the left pane on the Contacts page. Click on the “select all” checkbox beside Phone Number header to include all contacts within the group. Then follow steps 2 – 4 (see above instructions).
Update contacts using the exported file
Using a spreadsheet application (e.g. Excel), you can update or change your contacts information easily or copy data from another source.
After downloading and editing the contacts file, you can return to the Contacts page and upload the updated version to overwrite the information on the database.
Important note: To update existing contacts without duplicating entries, you must keep the Id column (column A) and click Overwrite existing contacts option. Do not change the default A-F column headers (Id, Groups, Phone Number, First Name, Last Name and Language). Otherwise, you might encounter upload errors.
Below are the steps on how to upload the updated file:
- Go to Contacts page
- Click Upload Contacts and a pop-up window will appear
- On the upload window, click the Overwrite existing contacts checkbox
- Next is to click Select file to upload to choose the updated file from your computer
- Then click Upload Contacts there.
Do not leave the Contacts page right away—wait for the upload to complete. You’ll receive a notification at the top part of the page or a desktop alert pop-up in case any errors are found, or will tell when all contacts have been uploaded successfully.
Upload Rules
Similar rules apply as to uploading a new contacts file:
- Make sure all phone number numbers are in international format (with country code) are accepted. Avoid using hyphen (-), do not append the plus sign (+), or add spaces in between when entering phone numbers.
- The only required column you must add data is the Phone Number column. The rest are optional so you can leave it empty.
- You may add columns or custom fields (e.g. Gender or Location). Our system will automatically add those columns on the website and populate any data you add. But please do not change or re-arrange the default column headers (columns A – F).
- Save the file as .xlsx format (Excel Workbook). Please avoid saving it as Excel 97-2003 format as you may encounter upload errors if the file has .xls file extension.
- Only the first sheet of the excel file is read by our system.
- If you enter Group names in the groups column, the contacts will be added to the specified Group (if a Group does not yet exist in the system, the system will automatically create the Group). If you want a contact to be put in 2 or more groups, separate the group names with commas, for example: Group 1, Group 2, Group 3.
Note that some special formatting, formulas or character scripts may cause upload errors. If you still encounter errors after following the instructions, please send us the file you tried to upload so we can review.