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Most import problems are decided in the spreadsheet, long before Orgo sees it. This page is what to fix while the file is still open in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. Built for the person holding an export from an old system, a membership register kept in a spreadsheet, or a list somebody else prepared. Replaces the guesswork of uploading, reading the errors, and trying again.

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Which files Orgo reads

The older Excel format (.xls) is not accepted: open it and save it again as .xlsx or CSV. A file over its limit is refused in your browser before anything uploads, with “File is larger than the 100 MB import limit” (or 500 MB for a CSV). Put the data you want on the first sheet. A workbook with several tabs is read from the first tab only, and the rest is ignored without a message. When Orgo converts a spreadsheet, real date cells arrive as 2026-03-14 (with the time added when the cell has one), so a properly formatted date column never has the day and month mix-up described below.
For CSV and TXT, save as UTF-8 wherever the option exists. Orgo also reads UTF-16 files and the older Western European encoding that Excel produces on Windows, but UTF-8 is the only one that carries accented names, Cyrillic and Greek without any guessing. A byte order mark at the start of the file is harmless and is removed for you.

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Big files

A CSV of member records is small, so 500 MB is a very large number of rows. If you do go past a limit, or just want a faster run, split the file:
  1. Open the spreadsheet and split it by row into two or more files, for example rows 1 to 40,000 and rows 40,001 onwards.
  2. Copy the header line into every part. Each file has to carry its own headers.
  3. Upload the parts one after another, mapping each one as its own import. Only one import runs at a time, so the later ones wait their turn.

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How Orgo reads the file

One header line, then one row per record. No merged cells, no blank spacer rows in the middle, no totals row at the bottom, no notes written above the headers. A spreadsheet meant to be read by a person is rarely a good import file; strip the presentation out of it. The first line with content is the header. Blank lines above it are skipped, but a title such as “Members export 2026” sitting above the headers will be taken as the header row, and the mapping screen will show your title as the only column. Put the real headers on the first line. The delimiter is detected, not configured. Orgo looks at the first lines of the file, counts commas, semicolons and tabs outside quoted text, and uses the one that splits the lines the same way throughout. Values that contain the delimiter are fine as long as your spreadsheet put quotes around them, which every export listed above does. A row wider than the header is refused. If a value contains the separator and is not quoted (a name written Smith, John in a comma file, for example), everything after it shifts one column to the right. The mapping screen warns you when it sees such rows in the sample, and the import refuses a file that has them. Re-save the file as CSV UTF-8 so the values are quoted, or take the separator out of the cell. One row is one record. Five rows for the same person are five rows, not one person seen five times, and each of them is processed on its own.

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Column headers are yours to name

Your headers do not have to match Orgo’s field names. You upload the file as your old system exported it, and then you say on screen which column goes where. E-mail, Correo, Adresa de email and Contact email are all fine, because you point each one at the destination field yourself in the mapping screen. Two things follow from that:
  • Do not rename headers to guess at Orgo’s vocabulary. Leave them as they are. Clear, human headers are easier to map than half-remembered technical ones.
  • Every column needs a header. A column with an empty header cell is left out of the mapping screen altogether, so give it a name, even a rough one, or delete the column.
Headers that do already match Orgo’s names, or the common alternatives for them (DOB for birth date, zip for postal code), are still worth having: the mapping screen recognises them and pre-selects the destination for you, which leaves less to do by hand. It is a shortcut, not a requirement.
Two columns whose headers differ only by capitals, spaces or hyphens count as the same column, so First Name and first-name collide and only one survives. Give every column a distinct name.

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Values that need care

Most cells are copied across as text and need no thought. These are the ones that quietly do something other than what the spreadsheet looks like it says.

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Dates in detail

For every column that lands on a date, the mapping screen shows a Date format menu with the spelling your sample appears to use already showing. That is a suggestion, not a decision: Orgo applies a format only once you pick one from the menu (pick it even when it already reads right). Until you do, a member or other built-in date column is read the way it always was, day first (14/03/2026), then year first (2026-03-14), then anything else Orgo can make sense of, and a custom date field accepts only 2026-03-14. When the sample could be read two ways, for example 03/09/2026 with no day above 12 anywhere, the menu turns amber and says Ambiguous, please choose: 03/09 is the 3rd of September or the 9th of March depending on your answer, and nobody but you knows which. If you leave an ambiguous column alone, the rows still import as day first, and each affected row carries a warning telling you to pick the format. The check is strict: 31/02/2026 is not read as the 3rd of March, it is not a date.
The yes/no rule is the one that catches people out. A column of da and nu, or ja and nein, or Y and N, imports as a column of no’s, and the import reports a clean run because nothing went wrong from its point of view. Convert those columns to yes and no, or to 1 and 0, in the spreadsheet first. A find-and-replace on the column takes a minute and is the single highest-value thing on this page.
Only capitals and spacing are forgiven when a choice is matched. Chess and Chess. are two different options, and so are Football and Fotbal. Tidy the spelling in the column before you import, or you will find near-duplicate options on the field afterwards.

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Start from a template

Every import type on the Data import page carries a helper on its step card, next to the upload button:
  • Example CSV is a file for that type carrying every column it reads, in the order the mapping screen shows them, with a few demonstration rows. Forms has no example, since its columns are the questions of your own form.
Use it as a starting point:
  1. Download the template for the type you are importing.
  2. Open it and look at the columns. They are the ones that type understands, written the way Orgo writes them.
  3. Replace the sample row with your own data, keeping the header line.
  4. Save as CSV or Excel and upload.
Working this way means your headers already match Orgo’s names, so the mapping screen has almost nothing left to ask you. It is also the quickest way to see what a type expects when the field list is unfamiliar. Any column of your own that the template does not have can simply be added: you will map it when you upload.

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Before you upload

  • The file is CSV, TXT, XLSX or ODS, under its size limit, and the data is on the first sheet.
  • CSV and TXT files are saved in UTF-8.
  • The headers sit on the first line with content, with nothing above them.
  • Every column has a header, and no two headers are the same.
  • There is one row per record: no merged cells, no spacer rows, no totals line.
  • Every date column uses one spelling from top to bottom, including the last rows.
  • Every yes/no column uses yes, 1 or true, and nothing else means yes.
  • Nothing you wanted to erase was left blank, because a blank cell changes nothing.
  • Files about people carry an email column wherever you have addresses.
  • You scrolled to the bottom of the file and checked that the last rows look like the first ones.
That last one is worth the thirty seconds. Exports often start clean and turn messy several thousand rows in, where a different date format or a stray note was pasted years ago.

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Troubleshooting

The limit is 500 MB for CSV and TXT and 100 MB for Excel and OpenDocument, and it is checked in the browser, so the message appears before anything is uploaded. Save a spreadsheet as CSV to get the higher limit, or split the file by row into parts, copy the header line into each part, and import the parts one after another. If the file is unexpectedly large for its row count, look for empty columns stretching far to the right, or thousands of empty rows below the data: delete them and export again.
Open the column in the mapping screen and pick the right Date format from the menu: it must match how the file writes the date. A column that mixes spellings (14/03/2026 in some rows, 2026-03-14 in others) cannot be read with one format, so make it uniform in the spreadsheet first. In Excel, select the column, give it a custom format of yyyy-mm-dd and export again. Watch for a column of plain numbers like 46095 in a CSV: that is a date Excel lost the formatting of, and Orgo cannot read it as a date.
Only true, 1 and yes are read as yes. Any other word, in any language, is stored as no without an error, so the import looks successful. Fix the column in the spreadsheet with a find-and-replace, da to yes and nu to no for example, then import the corrected file. Because a blank cell changes nothing, re-importing the same file with the column corrected will set the values that should be yes, as long as the run is allowed to update people already on file.
Orgo needs one. Add a line at the top naming each column. The names are yours to choose, since you map them on screen, so plain words are enough. Also check that nothing sits above that line: a report title, a date stamp or an exported note on line one will be treated as the headers by the mapping screen. Delete those rows and save again.
The separator is chosen by counting commas, semicolons and tabs outside quotes across the first lines. A file that mixes separators, usually because it was edited by hand after export, can fool that, and so can a value that contains the separator without being quoted. The reliable fix is to open the file in your spreadsheet, check that the columns split correctly there, and export it once more as CSV UTF-8 so the whole file uses one separator and quotes what needs quoting.