Users can import existing contacts from an electronic address book into their Aptela address book. 

If you haven’t already done so, please export your existing contacts from the electronic source to a CSV file before proceeding.

To import contacts:

1. Log into your user account: my.aptela.com.
2. Click Phonebook at the top of the page.
3. Click the My Contacts tab.
4. Click the Import button.
5. Browse your computer for the CSV file you exported from your other address book.
6. Click Next.
7. For each Contact Field you want Aptela to import, match a corresponding column header from your file using the drop downs.  If necessary, use the scroll bar for additional contact fields.  TIP: have your file open in a separate application to confirm column header names.
8. Click Next, and then review the confirmation page.

If one or more contacts do not successfully import:

1. Fix the error in your CSV file. 
2. Remove all contacts from your file that successfully imported.  Keeping them on the file will import an additional contact record for them.
3. Save the file with a new file name (to avoid deleting previous file information).
4. Try importing the file again.

If problems persist, please submit a technical support ticket.

Notes on Importing Contacts from Outlook

There are some common issues when importing contacts from Outlook that can be avoided or resolved by fixing the data in the CSV file before importing (or by fixing the issues and just re-importing the fixed records).

1. Phone Number fields in Outlook can contain extensions as well as text

• An Outlook field can look like this: (999) 555-5555 x103 Office. Aptela is expecting only a number and provides another field for the extension but has no field for the text
• Solution: You can leave the number in the Number field but put the extension in another Outlook field, then when you import you can map the extension field to whatever field you used in the CSV file. For example, if this is the original CSV:

Change it to this:

Then when importing, map ‘Work Extension’ to ‘Business Phone 2’ and it will import correctly.

• Aptela requires either a First or Last name
• Usually Outlook allows this because you have a Company Name
• Solution: copy the Company Name into the First or Last Name field before importing

Other Considerations

• While Aptela Contacts provide multiple phone numbers per type (e.g., you can have several Work numbers for a contact) the import utility only allows one per type; so you can import one for each of Work, Home, Fax, and Mobile but you cannot import two for Work.
• Duplicates are not checked for, so if you have some issues with an import and fix the CSV file you should delete the successful contacts from your CSV before re-importing, or else delete the successful contacts from Aptela before re-importing the entire CSV again.

Import Mappings

Here are the typical mappings you should select when using the Aptela Import Wizard; you may adjust these as necessary depending on your CSV file.