Contacts: Import & Export
Bring your existing address book into Spun from a CSV file, and take a CSV copy of your Spun contacts out again whenever you need one.
Import contacts from CSV
Where the file comes from
The importer reads the CSV that Google Contacts, Outlook and the iPhone produce, as they come. There is no column mapping step: open the file and the importer works out the columns itself. A simple file of your own with a Name, Phone and Email header works too.
The import dialog carries step-by-step export instructions for each source under "Where do I get a CSV file?".
What the importer reads
| Detail | Taken from |
|---|---|
| Name | The name column, or first and last name columns joined |
| Phones | Every phone column in the row. The first becomes the contact's own number, the rest are kept alongside it |
| Emails | Every email column in the row. The first becomes the contact's own address, the rest are kept alongside it |
| Company, job title, department | The organization columns |
| Birthday | YYYY-MM-DD, or --MM-DD when the year is unknown |
| Address, website, notes | The matching columns |
| Anything else | Kept as an extra field on the contact, keyed by the column header, up to 30 per contact |
Phone numbers are best given in international format (+972501234567). A row with neither a phone nor an email is shown greyed in the preview with the reason and is not imported.
Import steps
- Navigate to Sidebar → Contacts
- Click Import
- Select your CSV file
- Preview: check the rows. The preview shows the phone, name, email, company, job title and birthday, a "+N more" chip for anything else the row carries, and a note on any row holding more than one phone or email
- Optionally pick labels to apply to every imported contact
- Click Import
- Summary: how many contacts were created and updated, how many details were filled in, how many extra phones and emails were kept, and how many rows shared an email with an existing contact or matched more than one
Import behavior
- Duplicates: a contact you already have is matched by phone number, or by email address when the row has no phone. It is updated with the new details rather than duplicated, and the saved name you already had is kept.
- Labels: the labels you pick in the dialog are applied to every imported contact. A
Labelscolumn in the file is not read. - Large files: the file is split into batches and uploaded automatically. There is nothing to prepare.
Export contacts
- Navigate to Sidebar → Contacts
- Click Export
- A CSV file downloads with every contact in the organization
What gets exported
One row per contact, one column per detail:
- Name
- Phone, then
Phone 2,Phone 3and so on for every extra number on record - Email, then
Email 2and so on for every extra address on record - WhatsApp Name and Is WhatsApp
- Language and Status
- Company, Job Title, Department
- Birthday, Address, Website
- Notes
- Labels
- Last Message and Created dates
- One column per extra field name used anywhere in the organization
The file is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so it opens correctly in Excel.
Re-importing a Spun export
A file exported from Spun can be imported back as it is, into the same organization or another one. Every phone, email, attribute and extra field lands in the same place it came from. The WhatsApp Name, Is WhatsApp, Language, Status, Labels, Last Message and Created columns are there for reading: the importer recognises a Spun export and leaves them out of the extra fields. Labels are applied from the picker in the import dialog, not from the Labels column.
What does NOT export
- Message history (use the data export in Settings → Safety for that)
- Media files
Extra fields
Any detail the importer does not recognise is kept as an extra field on the contact. You can also add your own from the contact card: open the contact, press the pencil on the details section, and add a named detail under "Other details". A contact holds up to 30 extra fields.