Start with the people you already know: import them from a file

Maya Okonjo signed up for Groupthink on a Sunday night. She opened Relationships and found an empty page.

That’s the hard part of starting any tool that’s about people. You already know hundreds of them. Some live in a spreadsheet she kept for client holiday cards. Some are in the Contacts app on her Mac. Most of her working life is in her LinkedIn connections. None of that was in Groupthink yet, and typing it in one person at a time wasn’t going to happen.

So she imported them from files instead.

Pick the file

On the Relationships page, click Import people in the toolbar. If your page is still empty, click Import people from a file under the main button instead. The import opens right there on the page.

Then choose where your people are coming from.

A file covers two kinds. A CSV from a spreadsheet or another contacts tool works. So does a contact card file, the kind that ends in .vcf. To make one on a Mac, select people in the Contacts app, then choose File, Export, Export vCard.

LinkedIn connections is for the people you’re connected to there. The screen shows LinkedIn’s steps. In LinkedIn, go to Settings, then Data privacy, then Get a copy of your data, and ask for Connections. LinkedIn emails you a link. Download the file and choose it as it is. The .zip works, and so does Connections.csv from inside it. The help center has a page for just this: Import LinkedIn connections.

A file can be up to 4 MB and hold up to 50,000 people. If yours is bigger, split it and import each part.

Check the columns

You see a guess for what each column holds, with a few sample values under it. Maya’s holiday card sheet had columns called “First”, “Last” and “Email”, and each showed the right guess with a few of her clients’ names and email addresses under it.

If a guess is wrong, pick the right one from the menu next to the column. An import keeps names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, mailing addresses, how to address them, partner and anniversary details, companies and job titles. Pick one of those, or Don’t import to leave the column out. In a LinkedIn file, Company and Position are kept as each person’s company and job title, and the URL and Connected On columns start as Don’t import.

A contact card file usually needs no changes. When Maya tried her Mac contacts, the name, email, phone number and birthday were all guessed right.

After you change a column, click Update the list below to see what your change does. You can’t import until you do.

Choose who comes in

Next you see everyone in the file, sorted into groups. Each group has Tick all and Untick all.

New people start ticked.

Some rows will look like people you already have. Maya had already added Theo Marchetti, a client she talks to every week, so the Theo row in her spreadsheet was marked Possible duplicate: “You already have Theo Marchetti. Importing makes a new person.” It started unticked. If they are two different people with the same name, tick the row.

Rows that share an email address or phone number with someone you have go under Adds to people you already have. Each one says which person it matched, like “Same email as Theo Marchetti.” or “Same phone number as Theo Marchetti.” A phone number matches even when it’s written differently in the file. If the file has a different name for them, the row says your saved name is kept. These start unticked too. Tick the ones that are the same person. What you’ve saved is kept, and only empty details get filled in. Where the file has a different value for a detail you have, the row shows both, and you can tick Use the file’s value to replace yours.

A row with only an email address can still come in. A row with no name, email or phone number lands under Can’t be imported and can’t be ticked.

If a value can’t be read, like an email address that isn’t one or a birthday that could be read two ways, a Left out line under that row names it.

Import

Nothing is saved until you click Import. The button shows how many people you ticked. If you change your mind first, Choose a different file starts over, and the close button at the top right leaves without importing anyone.

When it finishes, you see how many new people were added, how many people you already had got new details, and how many details were filled in. If some rows didn’t make it in, the result lists them with the reason, and a button tries again the ones that can be retried.

Click See your people to go back to your list, or Import another file to do the next one. Maya did her spreadsheet first, then her Mac contacts, then LinkedIn.

Where it shows up

On a person’s page, a detail that came from a contact card file says it came from your address book. One from a CSV or LinkedIn file says it came from a CSV. The full steps are in the help center under Import people from a file.

Why start here

Groupthink is a memory for the people in your life and work. Your calendar, your meetings and the notes you save keep it current. But your people have to be in it before there’s anything to remember about them. An import brings in the list you already have, so the next time you meet with a person, their page is already waiting.

If you already use Groupthink, open Relationships and import the one file you’d hate to retype. If you don’t have Groupthink yet, sign up and bring your people with you.