The Aptela Address Book imports and exports in the CSV (Comma Separated Values) format. The most common import problem is that many common email and contact management programs may not always export 100% valid CSV files. When importing such a file, Aptela will display an error message with the line number of the offending line.

Although CSV files can be easily edited in a spreadsheet program such as Excel, it may make it difficult to see problems with the file. One way around this (using Windows) is to right click on the CSV file and choose Open With Notepad. When the file opens, you will see your data separated by commas. Every line (record) needs to have exactly the same number of fields, which is the same as saying the same number of commas.

If you have an invalid CSV file, you will need to fix it before the import will work.

One tip to make this process easier: most email clients store contact information in a format that includes many fields, most of which are not used. Often the essential information you need are things like Name, Phone Number, Email Address, etc. Your CSV file may have upwards of 100 fields you are not even using. Taking a minute to delete these fields (using a program like Excel is perfect for doing this) will make the import process much easier, and if after doing that there are still some problems with importing it will be much easier to fix them.

Another tip is to make sure you use the same headers (field names) as Aptela does; this will make the job of matching your fields to the Aptela fields much easier. For instance, your CSV file might have a field called Business Phone, but in Aptela the same thing is called Phone.NUMBER.Work Phone. You will have to manually match these during the import process. However, if your CSV file has all the Aptela headers, using Match All during the import process will exactly match every field for you automatically. You can find a CSV file with the default Aptela headers here, or you can do an export from the Aptela Address book to generate a CSV file.