Importing Attendees From a Spreadsheet Without Breaking Anything

Almost every event imports a list at some point: last year's attendees, a partner's delegation, the sponsor's guests, or the registrations taken on paper at a desk. It is a two-minute job that creates a fortnight of duplicates if it is done casually.

Prepare the file before you touch the platform

• One header row, plain names. first_name, last_name, email, organisation, ticket_type. No merged cells, no title rows, no colour-coding that means something.
• One row per person. Not one row per company with four names in a cell.
• Save as UTF-8 CSV. This is what turns "Zoë" into "Zoë". Excel's default encoding is the most common cause of mangled names in event data.
• Trim whitespace and lowercase the email column. Trailing spaces defeat duplicate detection.

Decide what makes a person unique

Almost always the email address. Decide, before importing, what happens when one already exists: skip, update, or create a second record. Choosing "create" is how one person ends up with two badges and two confirmation emails.

Watch for the shared address — info@company.com used for four delegates. Either get real addresses or accept that those four cannot each receive their own ticket.

Dry run on ten rows

Import ten rows first. Open three of them in the platform and read every field. Check the accents, the ticket type, the organisation, and whether a confirmation email went out — that last one matters, because importing a list of 400 people with notifications enabled is an apology you cannot recall.

Turn notifications off for the import unless you intend to email everyone right now.

Keep the source file

Dated, unmodified, alongside a note of what you imported and when. If something is wrong two weeks later, the question is always "what was in the file" and the answer should not be "we edited it afterwards".

Fixing a bad import

If you can identify the batch — by import date, tag or a spare column — you can usually remove and redo it. This is why importing with a marker matters: add a tag such as import-2026-03-11 to every row so the batch is selectable. Without it you are matching by hand.

After the import

• Count. The number in the platform should equal the rows in the file, minus known duplicates.
• Spot-check five records against the source.
• Check the ticket type distribution — a wrong mapping usually shows up as everyone landing on one type.

Gathervo imports attendees from a spreadsheet with a preview, duplicate matching on email and notifications you control. Try it free, and see event data and GDPR basics before you import a list you did not collect yourself.