HQ - Importing Contacts

HQ can import customer contact information from external sources like Outlook or Gmail using the industry standard .csv (Comma Separated Values) format. The process of exporting your contacts will vary between contact manager apps, refer to the documentation provided by the app vendor. Below is an overview of the process using Microsoft Outlook as an example.

1. Export your contacts in the CSV format, the screenshot below shows the export tool in  Microsoft Outlook
2. NOTE: you must use Outlook’s remap tool to remap (rename) “E-Mail Address” to “Email” or HQ will not import any email addresses
    
3. Import the .csv file into HQ
   1. In the main HQ window click the Contacts icon
   2. When the window opens click the Import icon
   3. Navigate to the.csv file and import it

1. When finished HQ will indicate how many contacts were imported
2. HQ shows the Home address by default but this can be changed for each contact
   1. Click the Pencil icon, select the Address Type from the dropdown, check the box “Set as default address”
      
   2. If HQ doesn’t import the .CSV file close/reopen HQ and try again.

Notes on importing

HQ will only import items that EXACTLY MATCH the items in its contact manager. Any items that don’t match won’t be imported. For example, Outlook exports “E-Mail Address” but HQ only recognizes “Email”. You must remap/rename “E-Mail” to “Email” or HQ will ignore it.

If HQ doesn’t correctly import contacts from your contact manager you can open the .CSV file in a spreadsheet and edit the column headings to match HQ. This will almost certainly require trial and error and HQ can only delete contacts one-by-one, so experiment on a few contacts to get a clean import, then import the rest.

NOTES:

• HQ will not import a CSV file if it’s open in a spreadsheet, close the spreadsheet app first
• After deleting contacts close/reopen HQ and make sure the contacts are actually deleted

The screenshot below shows what the data fields in a CSV file look like in a spreadsheet. The name/label at the top of each column must exactly match the name/label support by HQ or it will not be imported. For example, if HQ isn’t importing names, open the .CSV file and look for the column with customer names. If the column name/label reads “Name, Last”, simply change it to “First Name”. Check each item that isn’t importing and make sure they exactly match the data fields supported by HQ (see below). Be sure to check spelling, spaces, hyphens – everything. If in doubt, copy/paste from the list below. If you do this be careful not to copy the space in front of each label/name (i.e. the space after each comma), it counts as a character which means that HQ will ignore it.

Data field names/labels supported by HQ:

First Name, Last Name, Company, Business Street, Business City, Business State, Business Postal Code, Business Country/Region, Home Street, Home City, Home State, Home Postal Code, Home Country/Region, Billing Street, Billing City, Billing State, Billing Postal Code, Billing Country/Region, Other Street, Other City, Other State, Other Postal Code, Other Country/Region, Business Phone, Home Fax, Home Phone, Mobile Phone, Email, Web Page