How to Import Phone Numbers

If you have a file with your customers' phone numbers, you can upload it to Selzy. Then you can send them an SMS newsletter.

Preparing the file

File format and size

Files in CSV, XLS, XLSX, and TXT formats are suitable for uploading.

 

XLS and XLSX files may have additional formatting elements, table borders, formulas, merged cells, and other elements that prevent importing the data correctly"(present tense). Therefore, we recommend that that you save your XLS and XLSX files as CSV files.

The file encoding is UTF-8.

The maximum file size is 20 MB.

The maximum number of columns in a file is 50.

Required fields

In Selzy, there is one required field — "Email". Therefore, to upload a contact, the contact row must also include the email address along with the phone number.

 

Contacts without email addresses will not be uploaded.

If you don't have email addresses, you can add stub addresses instead.

Format of phone numbers

Phone numbers must be in international format, starting with the + symbol and the country code, or starting with the country code. For example, +79161234567 or 79161234567 are correct formats.

Importing a file

In your personal account, go to "Contacts" → "Lists".

Go to the relevant list. Сlick on the Add Contacts button and choose Import contacts.

 

Alternatively,you can directly click on "Import contacts" in the Сontact Lists section without going to the list first. In this case, you will need to select the list at the stage of import.

The import page opens.

There are two ways to import contacts:

From a file. Click on the Select File button and select the file to be imported, which meets the requirements.

Manually. Go to the Manual tab, add the contacts you want to upload and click "Continue".

Next, configure the fields. Set the required field "Email". Next to the phone numbers, select "Mobile phone". Click "Continue".

Select the contact list and click "Import".

Data import is completed.

If errors occured during import, click "Error Report" to download the report.

In the report, you can see why not all contacts were imported and the reasons for errors. These can be, for example, duplicate contacts, errors in email addresses and phone numbers.

Frequently asked questions

How to import phone numbers without email addresses

This is no such possibility, but you can add stub addresses instead of actual email addresses.

Here we show how to do this in Excel

For example, we have a file with three columns - "Email", "Phone", "Name". In some rows, the Email field is filled in, in some it is not.

You need to fill in all cells in the column with email addresses.

To do this, copy the formula and paste it into a new column:

IF(ISBLANK(A2);B2&"@example.com";A2)

Then double-click on the plus sign in the lower right corner of the cell to multiply the formula to the entire column.

How this formula works:

• If a cell in the email column is filled in, its value is transferred to the current cell.
• If a cell in the email column is empty, a new email stub is created in a format XXXXXXXXXXX@example.com, where XXXXXXXXXXX is the phone number from the "Phone" column.

Important!

The formula works correctly if email addresses are in column A and phone numbers are in column B. If your file has a different column positioning, change their positions or insert letters of the desired columns in the formula.

Now let's replace the old column containing email addresses with a new column.

To do this, enter "Email" in the upper cell, copy the entire column and paste it instead of the old one. When pasting, it is important to select "Values", as shown below. If you just insert text, the formulas inserted will not work.

The file is ready for import.

How duplicates are imported

Since the” Phone” field is optional and the “Emai”l field is mandatory, the system will only check email for uniqueness. You can import phone number duplicates to the list if the email addresses are different.

Examples:

1.Uploading two contacts:

The phone numbers are the same, but the email addresses are different, so both contacts will be added to the list.

2.Uploading two contacts:

The phone numbers are different, but the email address is the same, so only one contact with a phone number which is imported last will be added to the list.

How to replace phone numbers that start with "8"

If the list contains Russian phone numbers that start with "8", and not "7" or "+7", you need to fix them. In Excel, you can do this in bulk.

Let us assume, we have a file with three columns - "Email", "Phone", "Name". In some cells, the phone number starts with "8", while in some with "7" or "+7".

To fix the numbers that start with "8", use the formula:

IF(AND(LEN(B2)=11;LEFT(B2)="8");("7"&MID(B2;2;10));B2)

Copy it and paste it into an empty cell in an empty column. Then double-click on the plus sign in the lower right corner of the cell to apply the formula to an entire column the formula to the entire column.

How this formula works:

• If the first digit in the phone number is "8", but the number has 11 digits in total, then the first digit changes to "7".
• In all other cases, the number remains the same.

Important!

The formula works correctly if the phone numbers are in column B. If your file has a different column positioning, change their positions or insert a letter of the desired column in the formula.

Now let's replace the old column containing phone numbers with a new column.

To do this, enter "Phone" in the upper cell, copy the entire column and paste it instead of the old one. When pasting, it is important to select "Values", as shown below. If you just insert text, the copied formulas will not work.

The file is ready for import.

How to correct mojibake in a file

Sometimes when importing contacts, you may see unreadable characters, such as:

The reason is incorrect encoding. In such cases, the file must be converted to UTF-8.

How to Change File Encoding to UTF-8 in Excel

Useful links:

Create a Contact List
Delete a Contact List
Copy or Move Contacts Between Lists
See Contact Information & Campaign History
Rename a Contact List
How to Update Your Contact List
How to Segment Your Contacts