Skip to content
Sign in Get started
Documentation

9bx user guide

Contacts (PhoneBook)

Importing, exporting and merging contacts

Bring contacts in from a phone or spreadsheet, take them out as vCard, CSV or Excel, and clean up people saved twice.

Contents: Import · Export · Find and merge duplicates · Example · FAQ

Who can use it

Staff with the contact import, export and merge permissions respectively.

Where: CRM → Contacts, buttons Import, Export and Duplicates.

Import contacts

Import from a phone's contacts export (.vcf) or a spreadsheet (CSV, Excel).

  1. Click Import. On a phone, create the file with Contacts → Settings → Export (a .vcf file).
  2. Choose file: drop a .vcf, .csv or .xlsx file (up to 10 MB) and click Continue. "n contact(s) found in {file}" confirms the count.
  3. Check columns: for each column of your file choose what it holds ("Import as"), or Do not import. 9bx guesses from the headings; check the first rows.
  4. Set Options: for someone already in the PhoneBook (matched by phone number or email) choose Skip them (recommended) or Add them again anyway; and optionally Also put everyone in this group.
  5. Click Import n contact(s). When done, Import finished shows Added, Already there and Failed. Failed rows are listed with their row numbers ("Rows that were not imported").
  6. Go to contacts.

Export contacts

Click Export and choose vCard (.vcf) for phones, CSV or Excel (.xlsx). The file contains the contacts you may see.

Find and merge duplicates

  1. Click Duplicates ("People who may be saved more than once").
  2. For each suspected group, choose the one to keep: "Choose the one to keep; the others are merged into it."
  3. Click Merge into the chosen one. You see "Merged".
  4. "No duplicates found - Nobody looks like they are saved twice" means the list is clean. Back to contacts returns to the list.

Example scenario

A manager gets a new phone book from a partner: a spreadsheet of 120 rows. She imports it into the group "Partners 2026", skipping people already saved. Eight rows fail for bad numbers; she fixes them and re-imports. Then she runs Duplicates, finds that "Md. Karim" was saved twice, and merges them.

Tips and FAQ

  • Always choose Skip them first; it avoids creating duplicates.
  • Export a vCard before a big cleanup so you can restore from it.
  • The import stopped. Check your connection and try again; rows already added are skipped the second time.
  • A number failed to import. It may already belong to another contact or be in a wrong format.

Contacts · Client import