Understand the import tool

Whether HubSpot is your first CRM or you’re moving from another system, importing helps you create records and activities, and update your database. Import files are spreadsheets of data used to organize your business’ relationships and processes.

Before you start importing, review the relevant HubSpot terms and understand the import process.

Glossary

• CRM Object: a type of a relationship or process that your business has, such as contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. When importing, an object is the type of dataset you're importing into HubSpot.

• Record: an individual instance of an object (e.g., “Tom Smith” is a contact record). In a single object import file, each row of your file represents one object record. If you're importing multiple objects in one file, each row will represent records that are associated with each other.

• Activity: an engagement that can be associated with records, such as an email sent to a contact, or a note logged on a ticket record. For the import tool, supported activities include calls, emails, meetings, notes, and tasks.
• Property: a field created to store information about your records and activities. In an import, properties will match up with your file’s column headers.

In the following example, the object being imported is contacts. Each row represents a contact record, and each column of information represents a contact property (First Name, Last Name, Email Address).

Supported objects and activities

The following are the types of imports you can complete, and the objects and activities supported for each.

Single object or activity import

You can import to create and/or update one object or activity at a time. In a single object import:

• You can create and/or update contacts, companies, deals, tickets, appointments, courses, listings, services, calls, products, and custom object records.

• You can create, but not update, tasks.

Multiple object and activity import

You can import to create, update, and/or associate multiple objects and activities at once. You can import multiple objects and activities in one file, or two objects/an object and an activity in two separate files.

In a multiple object import:

• You can create and/or update contacts, companies, deals, tickets, appointments, courses, listings, services, calls, and custom object records.
• You can create and/or update line items, but they must be associated with deals.
• You can create, but not update, emails, meetings, notes, and tasks. Emails, meetings, and notes must be associated with an object.

Other types of imports

You can also access the import process for other tools from the import page, however, these follow different steps than object or activity imports.

• Opt out list imports
• Custom event imports
• Dataset imports

Set up import files

Before uploading a file to the import tool, it's important to set up your files properly to make sure data is added correctly to your account. The following sections include important concepts and requirements for correctly setting up your files.

For sample files, refer to this article.

Requirements

Refer to the set up your import files article for technical limits and general requirements.

Unique identifiers

A unique identifier is a property value that HubSpot uses to recognize each record as one of a kind. In an import, you need a unique identifier to update records, avoid creating duplicate records (e.g., two records for “Tom Smith”) and to associate records with each other (e.g., import “Tom Smith” and associate him with his company “Smith Inc.”).

The unique identifiers available for use when importing are:

• Email: the email address of a contact. This is required when importing contacts to avoid duplicates or to associate contacts with another object. If you don’t have contact email addresses, use the Record ID to update and associate existing contact records.

• Company domain name: the website domain of a company (e.g., example.com). This is required when importing companies to avoid duplicates or to associate companies with another object. If you don’t have company domain names, use the Record ID to update and associate existing company records.
• Record ID: a unique property value given to each record by HubSpot. If you export existing records from HubSpot, each record will have a Record ID. This is the default unique identifier for deals, tickets, appointments, courses, listings, services, activities, and custom objects, but can also be used as the unique identifier for contacts and companies if you don't have emails or company domain names. If Record ID is included in your import, it will supersede any other unique identifiers.
• Custom property that requires unique values: if you've created a property that requires unique values, you can use the property as a unique identifier in your import files. This is supported for contacts, companies, deals, tickets, appointments, courses, listings, services, and custom objects.

Associations

You can also import to associate records with one another. If your account has a Professional or Enterprise subscription, you can also add association labels to specify the relationship between records.

Learn more about how to properly include associations in your import files.

Map columns to properties

Once you've uploaded your file to the import tool, there's a step in the import process when you'll be prompted to match the column headers in your file to HubSpot properties. Mapping correctly ensures that your data goes to the right place (i.e. the correct object and the correct property) when added to HubSpot.

For example, for a contacts file, you'd map the column First Name to the First Name contact property.

For a file associating multiple objects, you'd select the corresponding object and property for each column.

Import errors

If your import contains errors during the mapping process, you can manage certain errors to fix the data before it's added to your account. If there are errors following an import, you can review and troubleshoot the errors to add or update affected data.

Additional ways to update data in HubSpot

• For contacts and companies, you can turn on the setting to automatically create and associate companies with contacts based on the contact’s email domain. If you have contacts with email domains that are different from their companies' domains, or if you're importing other objects, follow the instructions to associate your records via import.
• If you have data in another system and want to set up a two-way sync, learn how to connect and use HubSpot data sync.