Excel and CSV documents can be used to create new lists or update data in existing lists. The corresponding import dialog also offers numerous configuration options for dealing with existing data. Lists are identified by their names, so it is crucial which list name is defined as the target in the dialog.
An updating import can be performed by anyone who has access to the list in the workspace. This form of import can only update editable fields in existing records. Possible column restrictions of fields are taken into account. The import file must contain all key fields of the data records and also the fields to be updated. For almost all data types, the new value from the import replaces the previous value. The behavior is only different in the case of a comment column. In this case, the imported text is interpreted as a new comment, which is marked with the timestamp of the import and the name of the user who carried out the import.
A full import can usually only be performed by the workspace owner. For other people, this action must be explicitly permitted through an option in the list template. This form of import can create, update and delete records and even create new lists.
There are two options for creating new lists.
Regular lists and aggregation lists can be recreated for existing list templates. Newly created regular lists do not yet contain any data.
If a suitable list template does not yet exist, it can be created together with the list itself from a data import. In this case, the newly created lists already contain data. When creating a new list template, a list schema is created based on the data in the import file. In most cases, this must be adapted afterwards, for example to make the columns multilingual, to adapt the data formats of the columns or to mark some columns as editable. These adjustments can be made in the list template editor.
More on list templates is described in the corresponding section of the documentation.
The easiest way to update data from an existing list is to select this list in the table before opening the import dialog. The name of this list is then automatically selected as the target in the import dialog.
If the name of an existing list is specified in the dialog, the data in this list is updated by the import. You also have numerous control options for handling existing data or the values in the editable fields of individual data records.
The schema defines the columns of a list, that are part of the export and import. Changing this schema results in certain measures applied to the existing data in the list, depending on the severity of the change.