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Importing from Excel

Already have a collection in a spreadsheet? You don't need to retype it. Collectary can read an Excel workbook (.xlsx) and turn its rows into items — either adding them to a collection you already have, or building a brand-new collection from the sheet.

Collectary can also import CSV files — see CSV files at the end. Both importers share the exact same steps; only the file you pick differs.

Starting an import

  1. On the home screen, open the ＋ New Collection menu and choose Import from Excel.
  2. Pick your .xlsx file.

The import opens as a short, guided flow with a few steps. You can go Back at any point, or Cancel to bail out — nothing is saved until the final step.

Step 1 — Pick a worksheet

A workbook can hold several sheets. Choose the one you want to import. (Importing several sheets at once is a future addition — for now, run the import again for each sheet.)

Step 2 — Check the data

You'll see a live preview of the sheet in a table. Two switches control how Collectary reads it:

  • First row is a header — when on, the top row supplies the column names instead of becoming an item. Turn it off if your sheet jumps straight into data.
  • Rotate 90° — flip the sheet when your fields run down the page instead of across it (each field is a row, each item a column). The preview updates instantly so you can see which way is right.

There's also a Source number & date format picker. Collectary makes a sensible guess, but if your sheet was made on a computer with a different language — say a German sheet (1.234,56, 31.12.2024) opened on an English machine — set the format here so numbers and dates are read correctly. Cells that Excel already stores as real numbers or dates are understood automatically, whatever your settings.

Step 3 — Choose where the data goes

  • Add to an existing collection — pick one of your collections. Each spreadsheet column will be matched to one of that collection's fields.
  • Create a new collection — give it a name. Collectary inspects each column and suggests a field type (text, number, date, and so on), which you can change.

Step 4 — Map the columns

This is where you tell Collectary what each column means.

  • Untick a column to leave it out of the import.
  • Into an existing collection: for each column, choose the field it fills, or mark it as the item's name. Field types that can't come from a spreadsheet — images, file attachments, audio, linked items, nested lists — are shown greyed out, so you always see they exist but can't pick them.
  • Into a new collection: confirm or change each column's field type and name, and tick one column to use as the item's name.

Step 5 — Done

Collectary imports the rows and shows a summary:

  • how many items were imported,
  • any rows it had to skip (for example, a row missing a required field), with the reason,
  • any individual cells it couldn't read (for example, the word "soon" in a number column) — those are left blank and the rest of the row still comes in.

Click Done to jump straight to the collection and see your imported items.

CSV files

A CSV (comma-separated values) file is plain text — one row per line, fields separated by a delimiter. It's what you get from "Save As → CSV" in Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets, and countless other tools.

To import one, open the ＋ New Collection menu and choose Import from CSV, then pick your .csv file. From there the steps are identical to the Excel import above: preview, choose a target, map the columns, done.

A few CSV-specific notes:

  • Delimiter is detected automatically. Comma, semicolon, and tab files all work. This matters for files exported on a German-language computer, where Excel uses a semicolon (;) as the separator and a comma inside numbers (1.234,56).
  • Quoted fields are understood, including values that contain the delimiter or span multiple lines (e.g. "Dune, the novel"), and doubled quotes ("") inside a quoted value.
  • A CSV has no built-in number or date formatting, so the Source number & date format picker on the preview step is your friend — set it to match the machine the file came from. Values that are already written in the universal form — a plain number like 1234.56 or an ISO date like 2024-12-31 — are recognised on their own and read the same way no matter what that picker is set to, so a file exported by a program rather than a person just works.

When a value doesn't fit

The import never invents data. If a cell can't be read as the field you mapped it to — a word in a number column, a value that isn't one of a choice field's options, a date range that ends before it starts — that cell is left out and the row is listed on the final Check the data summary, so you always know exactly what was skipped and why. Mapping two spreadsheet columns onto the same field keeps the first and ignores the rest, so a collection never ends up with two conflicting values for one field.

What can't be imported

Anything that isn't plain text in a cell: images, file attachments, audio, links to other items, and nested lists. These fields stay in your collection — they're just not filled in by the import, and you can add them by hand afterwards.