The Import tab turns a spreadsheet of records - a list of certificates, a page of index entries, your own BMD notes - into artefacts, without you rearranging columns first.

What it accepts #

• CSV or TXT files. Save as CSV from Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
• Comma, semicolon or tab separated - the delimiter is detected for you.
• A UTF-8 byte order mark is removed, and a file saved in the older Windows-1252 encoding is converted, so accented names survive.
• Up to 20,000 rows in one import.

Matching your columns #

After the upload you get a mapping screen: for each column in your file, choose what it is - title, artefact type, tags, transcription or comments - or leave it unmapped. Sample values from your file are shown beside each column so you can see what you are matching.

Tick keep skipped columns and every unmapped column is appended to the artefact's comments as "Heading: value", so nothing in your spreadsheet is silently dropped. A type value the plugin does not recognise becomes "other" and the original wording is preserved in the comments for the same reason.

Cell text is trimmed of stray spaces at the ends, and is cleaned the same way the artefact edit form cleans the same fields. Transcription columns keep the source's words exactly as they appear.

Where the rows land #

Choose whether imported artefacts arrive filed or in the inbox. Every import writes one entry in the research log, so the import itself is part of your record.