Map by meaning, not by column position
CSV is a table of text, not a contact schema. A column called Name may be a display name, while First Name and Last Name describe separate structured components. The workbench proposes mappings for recognizable headers, but you decide what each column represents. Keep an identifier such as 000042 as a custom text field rather than a phone or number.
Repeated email and phone columns can each map to their corresponding field. A slot connects a label column to its value, and address columns with the same slot form one address. Give unrelated addresses different slots. Empty cells do not create values; unmapped columns remain in the original CSV in the archive. Applying a new mapping rebuilds the contact preview and clears earlier contact edits.
Preserve bytes and understand CSV quoting
The CSV reader accepts UTF-8 with an optional byte-order mark and a comma, semicolon or tab delimiter. Quoted cells can contain delimiters, quotes and line breaks. Malformed quoting or inconsistent row widths produce an error. Legacy vCard encodings are handled in the vCard reader; an arbitrary non-UTF-8 CSV needs a correctly encoded export from its original application.
CSV has no typed cells. A spreadsheet can remove leading zeros, reinterpret a birthday or treat formula-like text as executable content. The protected CSV option prefixes such values with an apostrophe. That protection also changes a contact importer’s text, especially international phone numbers beginning with plus. Prefer vCard for direct contact import, or disable protection only when importing the CSV directly and treating it as untrusted spreadsheet content.
Validate a representative small batch
Use a small import that includes a long or accented name, several contact methods, a labeled postal address, a birthday and a custom field. Compare the imported contact against the original and review archive. Check labels and secondary values, not just the visible display name. Provider import behavior can change and can differ between desktop, web and mobile interfaces.
The tool does not sign into an account or reconcile an existing online address book. It also cannot restore fields that were absent from the source. If the destination drops an unsupported field, keep the preservation archive and choose a more suitable export profile. For larger provider imports, follow the current provider’s batch limits rather than assuming that this workbench’s 5,000-contact processing limit is also the destination’s limit.