Import contacts

An import is how a list that lives somewhere else becomes contacts you can message. It has two entrances — a CSV file, or phone numbers pasted into a box — and from the moment you press Continue they behave identically, because pasted numbers are turned into a one-column file and run through the same importer.

The part worth knowing before you use it is the preview: it tells you what the import will do, row by row, without doing any of it.

When to use it, and when not

Use it when you are moving from another tool, when somebody has handed you a list of numbers for a campaign, or when you want to relabel many contacts at once — export them, edit the labels column, import the file back. The export includes that column and the importer reads it, so the round trip works.

Do not import to keep a field up to date. An import is a one-off write and will not notice later changes at the source. Membership that goes stale belongs in a shared audience, which is recalculated each time it is used.

What you need first

• You must be an administrator. On plans with custom roles, an agent granted contact management can import too.
• Any label you want to apply must already exist. The import refuses a row naming a label this account does not have, rather than inventing it.
• A .csv file of 10 MB or less, if you are importing a file.

The CSV columns

There is no column mapping step. Headers are matched by name, so they must be spelled exactly as below. Download a sample csv in the dialog gives you a file with the right headers.

Every other column is kept on the contact as a custom attribute value, keyed by the column header — but it is only visible in the Attributes panel if a custom attribute with exactly that key exists.

The three choices for the whole import

Phone numbers

A number is stored in international form, but what you may write in the file is wider than that.

Lynomia Chat refuses rather than guesses: a local number with no country could belong to any of a dozen countries, and a wrong guess stores a number that looks plausible and reaches nobody. The country that was used is remembered on the contact, so editing it later starts from the same country.

Duplicates

Against your account, a row is matched by identifier first, then email, then phone number. What happens next is the choice you made:

A blank cell never clears a stored value, under either choice. Labels are additive either way, because an import should not be able to delete a decision another agent made.

Within the file, a second row naming a contact an earlier row already named is counted as a repeated row. One contact is created, and both rows' labels land on it. Since a phone number can belong to only one contact in an account, a file listing the same number twice produces one contact, not two.

There is no merge option on import — see contacts for merging two existing records.

Pasting numbers

Choose Paste numbers instead of a file. One number per line, or separated by commas, semicolons or tabs, so a hand-typed list and a column copied from a spreadsheet both work. Spaces inside a number are fine: +965 5111 2233 is one number.

This path sets phone numbers only — names, emails and identifiers need a CSV — and takes at most 10,000 numbers per paste.

Steps

1. In the contacts list, open the add menu and choose Import contacts.
2. Pick CSV file or Paste numbers, and provide one.
3. Set the labels, the country for local numbers, and what to do about contacts you already have.
4. Continue. Read the preview.
5. Import.

The preview groups rows into New contacts, To update, Left as they are, Repeated rows, No way to reach and Will be skipped, lists the rows you need to act on with the reason for each, and shows each number as it would be stored. It examines the first 250 rows and says whether that was the whole file.

Nothing happens until step 5. You can go Back, change a choice, and look again.

A worked example

A trade show gave you 600 numbers in a spreadsheet, written as local Kuwaiti numbers.

1. Create a label expo-2026 in Settings first.
2. Paste the column in, or save it as a CSV with one phone_number header.
3. Set Labels to expo-2026, Country for local numbers to Kuwait, and leave the duplicate choice on Update their details.
4. Continue. The preview says 548 new contacts, 11 to update, 38 repeated rows and 3 skipped, and names the three.
5. Import, then fix the three by hand.

Those 11 "to update" are people you already had. They keep their names and gain the label.

Limits

• No undo. An import cannot be rolled back. The preview exists so that you do not need one.
• The preview checks the first 250 rows; longer files are imported the same way, just not shown in full.
• The import runs in the background and the page does not report when it finishes. The account's administrators receive an email, with the rejected rows attached as a CSV — your original row plus an errors column saying why.
• The per-import breakdown of counts lives on that import's own page under Settings → Data, which needs the Data import feature enabled for your account.
• A row with a name and nothing else is created but never appears in the contacts list. The preview counts it under No way to reach.

Related

• Contacts
• Custom attributes
• Bulk actions on contacts
• Labels
• Shared audiences

If it does not work

Every row was skipped for unknown labels. The labels column names labels that do not exist in this account. Create them, or clear the column.

Everything was skipped with "a local number needs a country". The file has local numbers and no country was chosen. Set Country for local numbers, or add a country_code column.

The file will not upload. It must have a .csv extension and be 10 MB or smaller. Export again as CSV rather than renaming an .xlsx.

The import changed names I wanted left alone. The duplicate choice was Update their details. Re-run with Keep their details to add labels without touching anything else.

Arabic names came out as symbols. Save the CSV as UTF-8. Exports from Lynomia Chat already are, and re-import cleanly.