Import contacts from CSV
Bonds can import contacts from any comma-separated values (CSV) file — Google Contacts, Apple Contacts, Outlook, or any app that can export to CSV.
How to import
- Open your vault and go to Vault Settings (gear icon in the top navigation).
- Click the CSV Import tab.
- Drag and drop your CSV file onto the upload area, or click to browse. After uploading you will be taken to the column mapping screen before any data is imported.
- For each contact field, select the CSV column that contains that data. Columns you do not want to import can be left as — not mapped —. Common column names are detected and mapped automatically.
- Click Import. Bonds processes every row and shows a summary when finished.
Supported fields
| Contact field | Notes |
|---|---|
| First name | Required. Rows without a first name are skipped. |
| Last name | |
| Middle name | |
| Nickname | |
| Prefix | Mr., Dr., Prof., … |
| Suffix | Jr., Sr., MD, … |
| Gender | Matched to your account genders by name. Common values (Male/Female/Other and their translations) are recognised automatically. |
| Birthday | Multiple date formats are accepted — see below. |
| Stored as a contact email address. | |
| Phone | Stored as a contact phone number. |
| Company | Stored as a note on the contact ("Company: …"). Full company linking is not supported in CSV import. |
| Job title | |
| Tags | Comma-separated list of tag names inside the cell. Tags are created automatically if they do not exist. Example: "Family, Friends" |
| Groups | Comma-separated list of group names. Groups must already exist in your vault before importing. Example: "Book club, Hiking" |
| Notes | Free-text note attached to the contact. |
| Address — street | |
| Address — city | |
| Address — state / province | |
| Address — postal code | |
| Address — country | Imported as a "Home" address type. |
Accepted birthday formats
| Format | Example |
|---|---|
| ISO 8601 | 1985-06-15 |
| European (DD/MM/YYYY) | 15/06/1985 |
| US (MM/DD/YYYY) | 06/15/1985 |
| With dashes | 15-06-1985 |
| Long form | 15 June 1985 or June 15, 1985 |
| Short month | 15 Jun 1985 or Jun 15, 1985 |
Tags and groups with commas
Your CSV must quote any cell that contains a comma. Standard spreadsheet apps (Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice Calc) do this automatically when you export to CSV. Example row:
John,Doe,"Family, Friends","Book club"Column auto-detection
Bonds recognises common column names and maps them automatically. If your column headers use different names, you can adjust the mapping on the mapping screen.
Recognised names (case-insensitive, punctuation ignored):
| Field | Recognised headers |
|---|---|
| First name | First Name, FirstName, Given Name, Prénom |
| Last name | Last Name, LastName, Surname, Family Name, Nom |
| Email, Email Address, Mail, Courriel | |
| Phone | Phone, Phone Number, Mobile, Telephone, Tel |
| Birthday | Birthday, Birthdate, DOB, Date of Birth, Naissance |
| Company | Company, Organization, Organisation, Employer, Société |
| Tags | Tags, Labels, Categories |
| Groups | Groups, Groupes |
Tips
- Duplicate contacts are not detected. Running the import twice will create duplicate contacts. Check your existing contacts before importing.
- Imports are not reversible from the UI. If you need to undo an import, restore a backup from Vault Settings → Backups.
- Large files (thousands of rows) may take a minute to process. Keep the page open until the result appears.
- UTF-8 BOM files (produced by Excel on Windows and some other apps) are handled automatically — the invisible byte-order mark is stripped before reading column headers.