Migrating from a spreadsheet

Migrate your library from a manual spreadsheet.

Required columns

At minimum:

• title
• author_name

Recommended:

• isbn (enables ISBN lookup auto-fill for missing metadata)
• genre
• description
• barcode

Optional but useful

• subtitle
• publisher
• publication_year
• pages
• age_min, age_max
• shelf_location

Format

• CSV (.csv) — works best
• Or Excel (.xlsx) — works but may have encoding issues

UTF-8 encoding

Save as UTF-8 to avoid character mangling. Excel: File → Save As → CSV UTF-8.

Importing

• Settings → Migration → CSV Import
• Upload
• Preview shows mapping
• Confirm and import

What gets created

For each row:

• A book record
• A copy with the barcode from your spreadsheet
• An author record (if author_name is new)
• A genre record (if genre is new)

After import

• Verify a few books in your catalogue
• Cover images: only if isbn was provided (we fetch from Google Books/Open Library)
• Otherwise, manually upload covers for the most important books

Help available

Email hello@tryshelfwise.com with your spreadsheet and we'll review. Often we spot column issues or suggest improvements before import.