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How to Upload Contacts Data from CSV File in Google Sheets

Most contact management systems, databases and CRM tools offer an export option to let you extract data of your contacts for importing into another tool. You can export the data in CSV format and then import it into Google Sheets for mail merge.

CSV files are plain text files, they have a column header and the contacts are in subsequent rows, one contact per row. Here's an example of a CSV file:

first_name,last_name,email_address,country,company
Bryna,Vernall,bvernall0@1und1.de,China,Skipfire
Neille,Aleevy,naleevy1@naver.com,Moldova,Babblestorm
Hugues,Aldren,haldren2@hibu.com,Nigeria,Voonix
Edan,O'Lennachain,eolennachain3@businessinsider.com,Brazil,Quinu
Link,Botfield,lbotfield4@unblog.fr,Armenia,Bubblemix
Tab,Gamell,tgamell5@nba.com,Vietnam,Quamba

Import CSV in Google Sheet​

Open Google sheet and choose Import Contacts from the Extensions -> Mail Merge with Attachments menu as shown in the screenshot.

Import Contacts in Mail Merge

Choose CSV file from the list of contact services. Now click the Upload button to upload the CSV file to Google Sheets.

Upload CSV to Google Sheets

Clean up Imported Data​

Please ensure that the first row of the CSV file contains the column headers. If the first row contains the data, you need to manually add the column headers in the first row of the Google Sheet.

Also, please ensure that the column containing the email address of contacts is titled Email Address and not anything else. Mail Merge will look for the Email Address column in sheet when sending the emails.

Alternate Approach​

If you are importing a bulky CSV file, or you would like to preserver the dates and formulas in the CSV file, you can use the built-in CSV importer in Google Sheets to import the CSV file.

Inside your Google Sheets, go to the File menu and choose the Import option. Switch to the Upload section and select the CSV file that you have to your desktop in the previous step.

Import CSV

Choose Append to Current Sheet as the import location and click the Import Data button to start the import process. You may check the Convert text to numbers, dates and formulas option to ensure that the dates and formulas are preserved in the imported data.