Import, upload, and export contacts in Front

 Overview

You can quickly import a large number of contacts into Front using a comma delimited CSV file, without the need to manually add your contacts one by one! You can even upload their lists, description, and Twitter, in addition to basic phone and email contact information.

Other methods for uploading and managing your contacts in Front are:

• Using our Contact API
• Using contact integrations

If you'd like to upload accounts rather than contacts, see this guide.

---

Prepare your CSV file

Template

You can download a CSV template here: Front Contacts Import Template

File formatting

Column headings and naming conventions are critical for a successful import. The file must be comma delimited and may only contain the exact fields listed below, in any order:

Column heading	Contact field	Example value	Description
name	Name	John Smith	[Required] Must contain the full name. First Name and Last Name cannot be divided in separate columns.
email	Email	jsmith@front.com	Include the email address associated with the contact. You can add multiple email addresses to a contact by appending the heading: email2, email3, etc.
phone	Phone number	19998887777	Include the country code (like +1 for USA) in any phone numbers for consistency. If no country code is provided, Front will add the +1 country code by default. You can add multiple phone numbers to a contact by appending the heading: phone2, phone3, etc.
link	Link	https://front.com/	A link associated with this contact
contactList	Contact List	VIPs	The name of the contact list the contact belongs to. You can add a contact to more than one contact list by listing them in contactList, contactList2, contactList3, etc.
twitter	Twitter	@jsmith123	The contact's Twitter handle
description	Description	Front is the leading Customer Communications Hub	A description of the contact
accountName	Account	Front	The name of the account the contact belongs to. This will associate the contact to the oldest account in Front with a matching case-insensitive name. For example, supplying "Acme" would link the contact to an existing "Acme" account in Front. Learn more about accounts here.
name of your custom contact field, e.g. Account Manager	Custom fields	Depending on the type of custom field, this could be a string, number, boolean, date time, or teammate email	You can add columns for any of the custom contact fields you’ve set up.

Here are the valid values that can be supplied for each type of custom field column:

Custom field type	Valid CSV values
Date and time	Unix timestamp, to millisecond accuracy. 2021-11-18 09:30:00 PST would be uploaded as 1637256600000.
Inbox	Provide the inbox ID (e.g. inb_12345), not the inbox name (e.g. Marketing Shared Inbox). The inbox ID can be obtained via the API.
Number	A number
Teammate	The login email address of a user within your company in Front (usernames are not accepted)
Text	Any text
Yes or no	Valid values include “True”, “False”, “Yes”, or “No” (case insensitive)

The following contact fields cannot be imported:

• Twitter DM
• Custom channel

Important to know

• Extra columns and rows must be deleted, including blank columns and rows.
• You can upload up to 3000 rows (not including headers) in a single upload.
• For large batches of contacts, you can break up your file into groups of 3000 contacts per file. Files must be uploaded one at a time.

Example

Below is an example of a CSV file we can upload:

---

Instructions

Step 1

Go to your Contacts Manager by clicking the Contacts icon at the top left of Front.

Step 2

In the left sidebar menu, click Shared contacts or Private contacts, depending on whether you want to upload contacts that are visible to all teammates or only to yourself. The contacts space you have selected will determine where your contacts are uploaded, as shared contacts and private contacts are kept separate.

You can also click Accounts to import a list of accounts.

Step 3

Click the Import button at the top right, then select from CSV.

Step 4

Drag and drop a CSV file or click the Choose file button to select a file from your computer.

Step 5

Click Import CSV to start importing your file. If your CSV is correctly formatted, you’ll see a confirmation in green text.

Step 6

After the import, you will see a new contact list created in the left panel based on the import date, in the format: YYYY-MM-DD. This is an easy way to access your contacts from a single import all at once.

If you'd like, you can delete this contact list by following the steps here. If you listed any new contact list names in your CSV, those contact lists will also be created for those contacts. Otherwise, you’ll find your contacts in your specified lists.

---

Errors you might see

Contact imports require specific formatting to ensure you can use your contacts correctly in Front! If you hit an error, please check the following common issues and solutions:

We display	How to fix
Missing headings in first row	We cannot detect a header row. Check to see if you have an extra empty row and check that your first row contains field names.
File type not in .csv format	We only support comma delimited CSV files. Convert your file to a .csv format.
Maximum rows 3000	We only support a maximum of 3000 rows per file (not including the header). You can always split large CSV files into smaller ones.

Download error file: Click Download updated CSV to view a file containing rows with errors, along with the error messages. Please see an example error log file below along with common error types and how fix them:

We display	How to fix
Invalid column heading	There are columns we don’t recognize (could be typo or totally new fields) or columns we don’t support multiple of (name#, description#, team#). If you wish to bring in custom columns, you may do so with our API. Please reference the following for additional details: https://dev.frontapp.com/reference/contacts#post_contacts
Name, email, or phone must be included	You’re missing values in critical fields: name, email, or phone for certain rows. Double-check and remove those rows or fill them out.
Invalid email	A value in the email column is not properly formatted (<text>@<text>.<text>).
Invalid Twitter handle	A value in the twitter column is not properly formatted (@name between 1 and 15 characters).
Invalid phone number	Please ensure that your phone number is in the format: +1-999-999-9999.
More row columns than header columns	You have more columns in that row than in the header row.

---

Updating contacts with a new upload

If you upload a new CSV that may have some of the same contacts that are already in your Contact Manager, Front will scan for duplicates automatically based on an existing phone number or email address. If there is a match in phone or email, then Front will only replace or update the new fields in your new CSV.

How fields on existing contacts are updated

• If the value was blank before and there is a new value provided in the CSV, use the new value provided in the import.
• If there was an old value before and there is a new value now, we add the new value provided in the CSV and remove the old value. The only exception is when the value being updated is a phone number or email field, in which case we will add the new value as a separate entry and keep the old value. 
• If there was an old value before and the value provided for that field in the CSV is blank, we will remove that value from that contact except for phone number and email. You will need to ensure you pass the current contact field value in the CSV in order to retain that value after the update.

---

Exporting contacts

There are two ways to export your Front contacts: either directly from your Contacts Manager, or through Front's contact API endpoint. 

To export your contacts directly from your Contacts Manager, go to your Contacts Manager and click Export at the top right.

You'll be able to choose to export Shared contacts, Private contacts, or Shared  and auto-created contacts.

The Shared and auto-created contacts option will export all contacts from your Shared contacts plus any contacts from your auto-created contacts that were created in shared inboxes that you have access to.