How to Clean a CSV Before Importing into Pipedrive

1. Understand Pipedrive's import structure

Pipedrive imports can create three entity types from a single CSV: Person (contact), Organization (company) and Deal. Each row can create one of each. The columns you map determine which entities are created.

Key fields: Person - Name is the display name (map First Name and Last Name separately or combine them); Organization - Name links to or creates a company; Deal - Title is required for every deal row. If you only want contacts, don't map any Deal columns.

2. Clean emails for Pipedrive's duplicate detection

Pipedrive automatically detects duplicate Persons by email address. During import, if a row's email matches an existing Person, Pipedrive offers to merge or skip. This means the email column is the most critical field to clean.

• Trim spaces, lowercase every address.
• Remove invalid addresses — Pipedrive will create the Person without an email, leaving a contact you can't deduplicate later.
• Remove duplicate emails within the file — otherwise Pipedrive creates separate Persons for each row and flags them as duplicates after import, requiring manual merging.
• Pipedrive supports multiple emails per Person (Email, Email 2, etc.). Only map additional email columns if the Person genuinely has multiple addresses.

3. Format phone numbers

Pipedrive stores Phone, Phone 2 etc. as separate fields. The calling integration and mobile app work best with international format (+919876543210). Strip spaces, brackets and dashes, add the country code, and mark clearly invalid numbers for review.

Pipedrive also has a Phone label (Work, Home, Mobile). If your CSV distinguishes phone types, use the label column; otherwise all numbers default to the label in your Pipedrive settings.

4. Map custom fields correctly

Pipedrive supports custom fields for Person, Organization and Deal. During import, you can create new custom fields on the fly by typing a name — but this often leads to accidentally duplicated fields ('Revenue' vs 'Annual Revenue').

• Before importing, check your existing custom fields in Settings → Data fields.
• Name your CSV columns to match existing field names exactly.
• For option-set fields (single option, multiple options), values must match the configured options. Add missing options in Settings before importing.
• Monetary fields should contain numbers only — no currency symbols or thousand separators.

5. Handle organization linking

When you map an Organization Name column, Pipedrive links the Person to that Organization. If the Organization doesn't exist, it's created. If it already exists (matched by name), the Person is linked to the existing one.

Standardize company names before importing: 'Tata Consultancy Services', 'TCS' and 'Tata Consultancy' would create three separate Organizations. Pick one spelling and use it consistently.

Pre-import checklist

TheSpreadFix can standardize all of these in one pass before you upload to Pipedrive.