Whether HubSpot is your first CRM or you’re moving from another system, importing helps you create records and update your database. Import files are spreadsheets of data used to organize your business’ relationships and processes. Before you start importing, review the relevant HubSpot terms and requirements for your import files.
Please note: engagements [emails, calls, tasks, or meetings] associated with your records cannot be imported via a file into HubSpot. Learn more about adding engagements using the API.
Glossary
CRM Object: a type of a relationship or process that your business has, such as contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. When importing, an object is the type of dataset you are importing into HubSpot.
Record: an individual instance of an object [e.g., “Tom Smith” is a contact record]. In a single object import file, each row of your file represents one object record. If you are importing multiple objects in one file, each row will represent records that are associated with each other.
Property: a field created to store information about your records. In an import, properties will match up with your file’s column headers.
Example file
In this example, the object being imported is contacts. Each row represents a contact record, and each column of information represents a contact property [First Name, Last Name, Email Address].
- Unique identifier: a property value that HubSpot uses to recognize each record as one of a kind. In an import, you need a unique identifier to associate
two different records [e.g., import “Tom Smith” and associate him with his company “Smith Inc.”], or to avoid creating duplicate records [e.g., two records for “Tom Smith”]. The unique identifiers used when importing into HubSpot are:
- Email: the email address of a contact. This is required when importing contacts to avoid duplicates or to associate contacts with another object. If you don’t have contact email addresses, use the Record ID to update and associate existing contact records.
- Company domain name: the website domain of a company [e.g., example.com]. This is required when importing companies to avoid duplicates or to associate companies with another object. If you don’t have company domain names, use the Record ID to update and associate existing company records.
- Record ID: a unique property value given to each record by HubSpot. If you export existing records from HubSpot, each record will have a Record ID. This is a required column when importing and associating existing deals or tickets with another object type, but can also be used as the unique identifier for contacts and companies if you do not have emails or company domain names.
- Association label [Professional and Enterprise only]: a value that specifies the relationship between records. Once you've created association labels, you can import them with your records.
Map columns: a step in the import process, when you will be prompted to match the column headers in your file to HubSpot properties.
As an example, you want to import and associate contacts and companies in one file. The objects being imported and associated are contacts and companies. Each row represents a contact record and its associated company record. Each column header represents properties that will be mapped during import. The file shown below includes contact properties [First name, Last name, Email address, Phone number, Favorite food] and company properties [Name, Company domain name]. There is also a unique identifier for each object that will link the two unique records in HubSpot [Email address for contacts and Company domain name for companies]. During the import process, you will map columns to HubSpot properties [First Name column to the First Name HubSpot property].
Import requirements
File requirements
All files being imported into HubSpot must:- Be a .csv, .xlsx, or .xls file.
- Have only one sheet.
- Contain fewer than 1,048,576 rows and 1,000 columns.
- Be smaller than 512 MB.
- Include a header row in which each column header corresponds to a property in HubSpot. The column headers can be organized in any order without affecting the import. You can confirm if a default property already exists to match your header or create a custom property prior to importing. Learn more about HubSpot's default properties for contacts, companies, deals, and tickets.
- Be UTF-8 encoded if foreign language characters are included.
- Contain cells in Number format if you're importing date-time properties in an Excel file.
- Only contain currency data formatted for USD using decimals [e.g. 123.45].
Property requirements
- Depending on the object[s] you are importing, your file must include the following columns:
- Contacts: at least one of First name, Last name, or Email [unique identifier]
- Companies: at least one of Name or Company Domain Name [unique identifier].
- Deals: Deal name, Pipeline, and Deal stage.
- Tickets: Ticket name, Pipeline, and Ticket status.
- Products: Name, and Unit price.
- Notes: Activity date, and Note body.
- Line items: Name, Quantity, Price, and the associated deals' Deal name or Record ID. Include the Product ID if you're also associating the line item with a product.
Please note: when importing line items associated with deals, the import will update the line item amount but will not update the associated deal amount. If you want to update the deal amount, you should manually associate the line items with a deal in HubSpot.
- To update existing records and avoid duplicate records, your files must include a unique identifier property for each object.
For contacts, this can be Email. For companies, this can be Company domain name. For all objects, you can export existing records and use the Record ID
as a unique identifier.
- If you're importing multiple objects and are including Record IDs, it is recommended to differentiate the file column headers to match the ID with the correct object [e.g., one column called Record ID - Contacts and another called Record ID - Companies].
- You can use a secondary email as the unique identifier for existing contacts who have a secondary email address listed in HubSpot. If you use a secondary email, and do not include the Record ID column in your file, the secondary email will not replace the primary email. However, if you include both the secondary email and Record ID as columns in your file, the secondary email will replace the primary email.
- For the contact properties Phone number and Mobile phone number, to import and automatically format the phone number based on country code, format as +[country code][number]. If there is an extension, add ext[number]. For example, a phone number with a United States country code would look like +11234567890 ext123.
- For properties containing a price, you must use one of HubSpot's accepted currencies. The list of accepted currencies and their currency codes can be found in the Currency tab of your account default settings.
- For properties containing a date, your date values must be formatted as one of:
- mm/dd/yyyy [e.g., 10/28/2020]
- dd/mm/yyyy [e.g., 28/10/2020] or
- yyyy-mm-dd [e.g., 2020-10-28].
Please note: if you're importing a default HubSpot date property [e.g., Close date], your values must be formatted as a UNIX timestamp in milliseconds. The date-time property cells must be in Number format if importing an Excel file. Learn more about how to format timestamp values and how to convert a date into UNIX format.
- To assign an owner to your contacts, companies, deals, or tickets during the import, include a [Object] owner header and add the name or email address of the user to each row in that column. Users who are assigned a record through import will not receive a notification that they were assigned a new record.
- Depending on the property field type, there are specific formatting requirements:
- For enumeration property types, if an option's internal value is different from its label, you'll need to use the internal value in your import file.
- Learn more about importing to checkbox properties.
- When importing products [Professional and Enterprise only]:
- If you want to import a Term property value, format the value in the Term column as PXM, where X is the number of months [e.g., P6M, for a term of 6 months] or PXY, where X is the number of years [e.g., P1Y, for a term of 1 year].
- If you want to import a Billing frequency property value, use monthly, annually, or quarterly if the product has a recurring price type. Leave the cell blank if the product has a one-time price.
Association requirements
- To import and associate multiple objects in one file, include information about associated records in the same row. In two files, use a common column to connect the records in each file. You can refer to the example files for more help importing and associating records.
- To associate one record with multiple records of another object, include the record's unique identifier in multiple rows for each record you want to associate. For example, Luke Danes is a manager at Luke's Diner, but a contractor at The Dragonfly Inn. To associate him with both companies, you'd need to include two rows for Luke Danes with the columns Email [or Record ID], and Company domain name [or Record ID] for each company.
Please note: if you don't include unique identifiers [e.g., Email, Company domain name, Record ID], the import will create duplicate records instead of associating each to the same record. Learn more about how to import and associate multiple objects.
- To import association labels [Professional and Enterprise only], include an Association
label column. You must create the association labels in HubSpot prior to importing.
- To set multiple labels to describe the relationship between two records, you can include multiple association label values in one cell, separated by a semicolon [e.g., Manager; Billing contact].
- If you're importing association labels in a multiple file import, you need to include the Association label column and a unique identifier for the object you're associating in the same file.
- To create child-parent company associations via import, include a Parent company column in your import file with the parent companies' Record ID values. Learn more about importing child companies.
Sample import files
The following files include the required column headers for each object type, as well as possible additional headers. You can add your own column headers to update or create any additional properties that are important to maintain your organization’s HubSpot database.
One object
- Contacts sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV
- Companies sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV
- Deals sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV
- Tickets sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV
- Products sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV
Once your file is ready, learn how to import one object into HubSpot.
Please note: products can only be imported in a single object import. You can associate an existing product to a line item, or manually associate a product to a deal or quote.
Multiple objects with associations
You can import and associate objects either together in one file or in two separate files, where each file represents one object.
Import multiple objects in one file
To import and associate multiple objects in one file, include the records you want to associate within the same row of your file. These sample files represent common use cases, but you can mix and match objects by replacing the column headers with the properties of another object.
- Contacts and companies sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
- Contacts and companies with association labels sample spreadsheet: XLXS or CSV.
- Contacts and tickets sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
- Companies and deals sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
- Companies and notes sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
- Companies, deals, and notes sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
- Deals and line items sample spreadsheet [with associated products] : XLSX or CSV. When importing in one file, you can only import one line item per deal.
Import multiple objects in two files
When importing and associating in two files, each file represents an object. To identify which records should be associated across the files, include a common column in both. One of your files should have a unique value for each row in this column. In the other file, use those values to indicate which record each row should be associated with.
For example, a common use case is to import and associate contacts and companies. In the following sample files, Company Name is the common column:
Companies sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
Contacts sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
In the company file, there is a unique value for each row in the Company name column. In each row of the contacts file, the values in the Company name column match the company that the contact will be associated with. You can use these files when importing contacts and companies, or mix and match other objects, as long as you include a common column.
- Deals and companies with association labels in two files: in these sample files, Company name is the unique key for the Company object.
- Deals sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
- Companies sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
- Deals and line items in two files: in these sample files, Deal name is the unique key for the Deal
object. When importing in two files, you can import multiple line items per deal.
- Deals sample spreadsheet: XLSX or CSV.
- Line items sample spreadsheet [with associated products]: XLSX or CSV.
Once your files are ready, learn how to import and associate multiple objects into HubSpot.