FrontlineSMS allows you to text message with large groups of people anywhere there is a mobile signal.

Importing contacts

Dear friends, World Social Forum starts tomorrow and by now we have 200 people who signed to receive SMSs with useful informations about Belém.

I spent the day trying to import those contact from a spreadsheet originated in Excel with no success.

It is a very simple file with names and the phone numbers but Frontline does not open it. I go to file/import contacts and select the csv file but nothing happens.

Am I missing something here? Can someone help me on this matter?

Thank you.

Tags: contacts, csv, files, import

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by kiwanja on January 26, 2009 at 4:53pm

Hi Fernanda

Have you checked the format requirements of the file?

See "Importing data from other applications" at http://www.frontlinesms.com/help/filemenu.htm

Is the file saved as a CSV, with the correct file extension? Does the format match the requirements above? Can you see the contents of the file if you view it in a text editor?

This feature has been used successfully, so I'm assuming it's something to do with the file format. What version of FrontlineSMS are you using? The latest is 1.4.8 (displayed along the top bar towards the left when you run the program).

Ken

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Permalink Reply by Fernanda Martins on January 26, 2009 at 5:21pm

Ken, sorry to bother about this. I've been sending messages with frontline and everything seemed ok.

I made it in excel and saved as csv. It has two columns, names in the first and telephone number in the other. It is probably a simple mistake I've done in excel.
I am uploading it and sent a error report.

Attachments:

OISab2401.csv, 2 KB

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Permalink Reply by kiwanja on January 27, 2009 at 1:48am

Fernanda

I've taken a quick look at this and it seems to me that you have semi-colons separating the fields (;) and not commas (,).

The fields need to be separated by commas.

If you do that I'm sure it will work.

Ken

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Permalink Reply by Fernanda Martins on January 27, 2009 at 5:33am

Dears, I managed to make it work.
Is seems that excel mac does not saves a proper .csv file that frontline can understand. It doesn't matter if you save it csv (windows).

I opened de mac csv file in a PC, saved again (no changes at all. Triyed on windows and Linux, and the lynus file worked!

Thank you fou your quick assistance, Ken.

Fernanda