---
title: Importing CSV Files
description: "One-place studies arrive with spreadsheets. The **Import** screen takes a CSV export from any spreadsheet program and files it as a **record set** - the unit of inventory and of reversal. ## The steps 1. **Upload** the CSV. The first…"
url: "https://www.ancestorpress.com/docs/ops-importing-csv/"
updated: "2026-09-11"
category: "AncestorPress One-Place Studies"
---

# Importing CSV Files

One-place studies arrive with spreadsheets. The **Import** screen takes a CSV export from any spreadsheet program and files it as a **record set** - the unit of inventory and of reversal.

## The steps

1. **Upload** the CSV. The first row is read as the column headings.
2. **Match the columns.** Each of your columns is matched to a record field. Start from one of the prebuilt layouts - **FreeBMD births, marriages and deaths**, **census transcription**, **parish register (baptisms, marriages, burials)** and **monumental inscriptions / burial list** - or match by hand. Give the record set a name and a record type.
3. **Date all rows as**: for a source with a single date, such as a census year, enter it once here and every row carries it. Without this, rows with no date column come in undated and stay off the public pages.
4. **Excel date numbers**: tick this if a date column holds bare serial numbers such as 20000, and they are converted to dates.
5. **Preview** shows the first rows as they will be stored. Confirm to run the import; large files are processed in chunks, so a 100,000-row transcription completes without timing out.

## Templates

A matching you will use again - the same society transcription layout every quarter - can be saved as a template from the matching step and chosen from **Start from a template** next time. Templates are stored in the shared core, so they are available to the other AncestorPress plugins on the site.

## Undoing an import

The **Imports and record sets** list on the Import screen shows every import with its row count. **Undo import** removes that record set's rows and nothing else. A wrong file or a wrong matching therefore costs nothing: undo, fix, import again.

## What the import never does

Imported values are stored exactly as they appear in the file. Names, dates and places are never corrected or standardised in place; the standardised forms used for sorting are kept separately and stay correctable. Importing never merges or overwrites existing records - importing the same file twice gives you two record sets, by design, and the undo is the recovery.