Import and export contacts

Who can do this

• Owner
• Admin

Importing needs admin or owner rights. Any member can export.

Import a CSV

Contacts → Import.

Columns

Column	Required	Notes
phone	Yes	Include the country code. 919876543210 and +919876543210 both work.
name	No
email	No
tags	No	Semicolon-separated, for example vip;mumbai. Not commas, because a comma would break the CSV.

Any custom contact field you have defined can also be a column. Use the field's key as the header, not its label.

The file must be .csv.

Duplicates

Before importing, choose what happens when a phone number already exists:

• Skip duplicate: leave the existing contact untouched.
• Update existing: overwrite it with the values in the file.

Matching is on phone number.

Results

After the import you get three counts: Created, Updated and Skipped.

Rows that failed are listed with the row number and reason. Download errors saves them as a CSV so you can fix and re-import just those rows rather than hunting through the original file.

Common reasons a row fails:

Reason	Fix
Invalid phone number	Add the country code, remove spaces and punctuation
Missing phone	Every row needs one
Duplicate, strategy set to skip	Expected. Re-run with Update existing if you meant to overwrite.

Before you import a big list

• Only import people who agreed to hear from you. Meta scores your number on how recipients react. A cold list bought from somewhere will damage your quality rating, and Meta lowers your messaging limit when it drops.
• Test with 5 rows first. Confirm the columns map the way you expect before running 5,000.
• Tag on the way in. A tags column costs nothing at import time and saves bulk-tagging afterwards. It also gives your first campaign an audience.

Export

Contacts → Export downloads a CSV named contacts-YYYY-MM-DD.csv.

What it contains depends on what you have selected:

• Rows ticked: only those contacts.
• Nothing ticked: every contact matching the current search and filters.

So to export one segment, filter first, then export. Custom fields are included.

Related

Working with contacts

Filters, bulk actions, blocked and unsubscribed.

Campaigns

Send to the list you just imported.