Can I import my spreadsheet again after I have corrected it?

A buying question, answered from the code rather than from the brochure · Updated 21 September 2026

Yes — if you say which column identifies a record. Matched rows are corrected, not added a second time, and the record count does not double.

This page said the opposite until 21 September 2026, and the old answer is kept below because the limits that remain are the important part.

What happens when you bring the file back

It asks: add them all as new, or match on a column. It offers only the columns that could honestly identify a record — a value on every row, and no two rows sharing one. It never guesses which, because a wrong guess overwrites the wrong person’s record and says “imported” while doing it.

Pick a column and every row that matches an existing record corrects it. Rows that match nothing become new records. A register of four thousand items, re-imported after a year of corrections, is still a register of four thousand.

What it changes, and what it leaves alone

Only the columns your file carries. A three-column spreadsheet is not a statement about the twenty fields somebody has since filled in inside the app, so those are left exactly as they are.

A column that is in your file but empty clears the value, because an exported blank is somebody deleting something. And every change is kept in the record’s history with who made it and when, so you can put it back if it was wrong.

Two things it will not do

It never deletes a record that is missing from the new file. A short export, a filtered sheet, a tab someone forgot — any of those would otherwise wipe most of your register in one click. Deleting is something you do deliberately, record by record.

It refuses the whole import rather than guessing. Nothing is written if the column you chose is blank on any row, holds the same value twice in your file, or already names two records in your app. Each refusal names the value and the spreadsheet row, so you can go and look at it.

What the import does with a brand-new file

It reads a CSV or a one-sheet Excel file, creates the collection, and names the fields from your own column headers. There is no mapping step: it guesses each column’s type and tells you why it guessed. It asks exactly one other question — when a date column can be read two ways — because guessing there would write wrong dates and say nothing.