Whether you have an existing file (on Excel or Google Sheets, for example) or exported information from another tool, you can seamlessly import people and/or company data into folk.
Clean your data
Before any file import, cleaning your data is crucial to ensure folk displays the information correctly. These are the five key steps to ensure you do before importing:
Split First Name and Last Name into separate columns
Combine all address data into a single field (e.g. columns like 'City' and 'Street' should be put into one titled 'Address')
Split multiple emails and phone numbers into separate columns
Delete unnecessary columns (e.g. ID, date created)
Migrating from a specific CRM? You can use our ChatGPT prompts here to help you split your data efficiently.
Import into folk
Select the group & view
Select the group you want to import into and choose whether to import into 'All people' or 'All companies'.
'All people' are usually what you'll likely be importing to cover data such as first name, last name, address, phone, URLs, and associated company name.
'All companies' are for when you want to import mostly company data, such as company industry, number of employees, revenue, etc.
By importing people and their associated companies, the people will be in 'All people' and their companies in 'All companies'. People will be automatically linked to their associated company.
Upload your file
When ready, select the three dots in the top right-hand corner and 'Import from file (CSV, XLSX...)'. Alternatively, choose 'Import people' or 'Import companies', which will appear when the group is empty. You can import your file into an empty or populated group with contacts.
Select 'Upload file'. You can import your file in several formats: .csv, .xls, .xlsx, .tsv and .txt.
For files in .xlxs format with multiple tabs
Each tab will need to be individually mapped for documents with multiple tabs. Below is an example of a .xlxs file uploaded to folk with six different tabs. For each tab, you'll need to ensure it's checked on the left-hand side and then select 'File' on the right. Once the fields are mapped and data for that tab imported, you'll need to reimport the data again and do the other tabs.
People and company data on one file
Import the people data first in the "All people" view while only mapping the native company fields. Native company fields are URLs, phone numbers, emails, addresses, and descriptions directly related to the company.
If you have custom company data that isn't part of a native field, such as company revenue, import the file again in the "All companies" view to add any custom field company data.
Map your fields
Once your file has been extracted, you'll have to map your data to the relevant fields in the group.
The left-hand side displays column headings from your file: the incoming fields.
The right-hand side displays the destination fields, where the data will be imported.
Folk will automatically recognize your incoming field to suggest the relevant fields to map.
You must review each row to ensure each field is correctly mapped.
For each row in this table, we recommend using the native fields to match the incoming field with the relevant destination field. You can find the drop-down menu for each item under 'unused'. For example, if you have a LinkedIn URL to import for your contacts, you can choose the URL 1 native field.
For custom fields that can't be mapped to native fields, you must select 'Add as new field' to create the field during the import. It will then be created as a text field. After the import, you can transform these fields into the right formats (tags, dates, numbers).
Once mapped, select 'Continue'.
Review & import
You will then be presented with an overview of how your data will appear in your group. This is your opportunity to see if anything needs to be corrected. If that's the case, we recommend coming out of this, correcting it on your end, and reimporting. You can also click inside a field from this page to make edits.
If there's any invalid data, the system will highlight this where it states 'Invalid' in red.
When you're ready, select 'Import contacts' in the top right-hand corner. Please be patient, as it can take up to 5 minutes, depending on how many contacts you have.
Format your data
When all the data has been imported, you can check through everything and decide if you'd like to transform some fields. We have more details in our guide on how you can transform fields in folk.
Considerations
There are some limits to your file import, which are listed below.
Maximum number of file rows: 100.000
Maximum number of file columns: 200
Maximum number of characters per row (primarily for notes): 2560
We can only import a list of contacts, not pipeline data. If you have a status column in the file, you can create the pipeline view accordingly once the contacts are imported.
At the moment, it’s not possible to import pictures from a CSV file. However, you can import profile pictures through our folkX extension when adding or updating contacts from their LinkedIn profiles. You can also upload them directly to the contact profile.
For now, you can't import interactions through our import tool. However, you can create a dedicated text custom field and manually input the data this way.
How to export data from other tools
Here's a list of documentation that will help you export your contacts in CSV format from your favourite software tools:
💬 Do you have any questions or feedback? We'd love to hear from you! You can find the folk team via:
Live chat from your account (the ? button in the bottom right-hand corner)
Or send us an email