How to import your data into Affinity – Affinity Help Center

Follow these steps to ensure your CSV file data is imported successfully into Affinity. You can also watch our recorded webinar.

Make sure your CSV file is saved in the CSV (UTF-8) format.
Make sure the very first row (Row 1) of the CSV file contains your column headers.
- Make sure there are no duplicate names for your column headers, each must be unique.
- Make sure there are no line breaks in your column headers - they should all be on one line.
Remove any duplicate rows in your CSV file (ex. Affinity on Row 2 and Row 3).
- Note: If duplicates do exist and you either choose Append or Overwrite - the importer will only import the first entry of the duplicates, while skipping the other duplicate entries.
To ensure a "clean" import:
- Make sure that data matches accordingly to each column header. For example, the Email Address column should only contains email addresses (remove hyperlinks), while the Amount column should only have numbers (no commas, only digits).
- When importing into opportunity-type list, the opportunity names should be unique - duplicate opportunity names will not be imported.
- If a column is completely empty, please remove before importing.
- Please make sure every column has a unique header.
To increase accuracy during the import mapping process, we would highly recommend that you map to the organization URLs (for organization lists) or contacts' email addresses (for people lists).

Click into the list you plan to import into. For this article, we will import into an organization-type list.
Click List Options on the top-right corner, then click Import data.
Drag-and-drop or browse for a CSV file.
Running into issues? Here are some common troubleshooting tips that might help:
- Please make sure that Row 1 contains your column headers.
  - If not, remove all rows until Row 1 only contains your column headers.
- Please make sure that there are no duplicate column headers.
  - If so, simply rename one so that they have different titles.
- Please make sure that, for columns with no column headers in Row 1, there are no data in Rows 2 and beyond.
- Please make sure there are no line breaks in your column headers - they should all be on one line.

Select one of the following import options:
1. Overwrite existing values with my new data: This will overwrite fields in Affinity with the ones you import from your CSV file. This includes fields that have no data (blank). If the imported CSV has no data (blank) in a particular field, it will re-write any data that is currently in Affinity with a blank.
2. Append my new data to existing values: This will append (or add to) a field if it is a multi-value field. If it is a single value field, we will not import the data for that cell.
3. Create duplicate entries: This will create a new entry for every imported row.
4. Skip these records: This will skip any rows from your CSV file that already exist on the list. For example, if an entity exists on both the list and the imported CSV file, Affinity will skip importing the duplicate entry and its associated data.
For this example, we only want to add these new data points to fields with existing values, so we will choose Append my new data to existing values, click Next.

Map the Name column from the CSV file to the Name field in Affinity.
Map the Website column from the CSV file to the Domain field in Affinity (highly recommended since Domain is the unique identifier for organizations).

Now that we have determined which specific organizations to import data into, we will map our remaining fields. Affinity will do its best to auto-associate the columns in your CSV file to the columns in Affinity. In our example below, you'll notice that three of the four fields are auto-mapped. However, CEO is not.
You can also remove any columns from your CSV that you don't want to upload. Simply click on the Trash icon, then click Delete.
Once you're done - click Import and you're all set! Just wait a few seconds and refresh your webpage to see the imported data appear on your list.

If your import is taking a while to load, check Viewing your data import history to track the status of your import.
Once your import finishes, there may be some skipped rows/cells that weren't able to successfully import over. Check Viewing your data import history to download CSV files of these skipped rows/cells and understand how to fix them moving forward (you can even import these CSV files of errors after making the necessary changes).

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at support@affinity.co.