Converting a spreadsheet to CSV

If you have a lot of stores to add, we support bulk importing store data from a spreadsheet.

To ensure a successful bulk import, you'll need a .CSV file that's encoded in UTF-8. Don't worry if you're not sure what that means - the instructions below will guide you through creating a correct file in all the most common tools.

Please be sure to follow these steps, as an incorrectly formatted file can lead to strange results. This is especially frequent with non-English characters (á, ä, ç, è, etc.) where München may turn into München or Héberg into HÄ©berg. It can also affect some English punctuation like the curly quotes created by Microsoft Word or Excel.

Please see the section corresponding to the software you're using:

Excel 2016 or newer

Good news! Starting with Excel 2016, you can export directly to the correct format with these steps:

  1. Open your .xls or .xlsx file
  2. Go to File > Save as and select This PC on the left
  3. Enter a file name and choose CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) from the file type dropdown
  4. Save the file, then import it to Stockist

Please note that "CSV (Comma delimited)" is NOT the correct option - the correct option includes UTF-8. If you don't see the UTF-8 option, follow the steps under the Excel pre-2016 section below.

Excel pre-2016

Earlier versions of Excel don't support the industry-standard UTF-8 encoding, so you'll need to use another tool to generate a correct file. Here are a couple of options, with the easiest listed first:

Use Google Drive

If you have a Google account, you can use Google Drive to export a correctly-encoded file:

  1. Upload your .xls or .xlsx file to Google Drive (not a .csv file - at that point the special characters have already been lost)
  2. Open the file on Google Drive
  3. Select File > Download as > Comma-separated values (.csv, current sheet)
  4. Import the resulting file to Stockist

Use Notepad

If you prefer not to upload your spreadsheet to Google Drive, you may also be able to convert it using Notepad:

  1. In Excel, go to File > Save As 
  2. Save your file as CSV by settings Save as type to CSV (comma delimited). Next, we'll need to convert the file to UTF-8.
  3. Close Excel and then open Notepad and open the CSV file from step 2
  4. Go to File > Save As and choose the following options:
    1. Change Save as type to be All Files (*.*)
    2. Ensure the filename still ends with .csv
    3. Change Encoding to be UTF-8
  5. Save the file, then import it to Stockist

Excel on Mac

Excel on Mac does not support working with UTF-8. We recommend uploading your .xls or .xlsx file to Google Drive using the steps under Excel pre-2016 above.

Apple Numbers

To save your Numbers file as a UTF-8 CSV, please follow these steps:

  1. Open your Numbers file
  2. Go to File > Export To > CSV...
  3. Expand Advanced options and under Text Encoding select UTF-8
  4. Click Next, choose a filename, then click Export to save your file
  5. You can then import the resulting file to Stockist

TextEdit on Mac

If you already have a CSV file on Mac, you may be able to convert it to UTF-8 with the following steps:

  1. Open your .csv file in TextEdit
  2. Select Format > Make Plain Text
  3. Open File > Save
  4. In the Plain Text Encoding dropdown, select Unicode (UTF-8)
  5. Click Save, then import the resulting file to Stockist