Importing an Excel or CSV file

Importing a file adds hundreds or thousands of shipments in one go, with their references and customer details, and updates the ones you already track. File imports are on the Starter plan and above; on Free you can paste up to 25 numbers at a time instead. Owners, Admins and Members can import.

Start from the “Upload” tab of the add dialog, or go to Shipments → Import. Every row is checked, and you see what will happen to each one, before anything is added.

Start from the template

The quickest way to a file that imports cleanly is our Excel template: Shipments → Import → Download the Excel template (there is a CSV template beside it). It has three sheets:

• Shipments: one column for each field below, with the tracking number, order ID, phone and pincode columns already formatted as Text, and a drop-down of the couriers TrackParcel for Business tracks in the Courier column. Other spellings are allowed there too: you match them when you import.
• How to fill: what to put in each column, whether it is required, and an example.
• Couriers: the courier names the drop-down offers.

The template comes with one example row, whose tracking number starts with TPSAMPLE. You can delete it or leave it: rows with a TPSAMPLE number are skipped when you import and counted as “Example rows skipped”, never added.

Format tracking numbers as Text

Spreadsheets treat a long run of digits as a number. Excel then shows it in scientific notation (1.23457E+11), drops leading zeros, and keeps only the first 15 digits. The tracking number is changed for good, and no courier will recognise it. We don't guess at the original: such a line is marked “Invalid” with the message “Excel changed this number to 1.23E+11. Format the column as Text and export again.” The template's tracking number column is Text already. In a file of your own, make the column Text before the numbers go in.

In Excel

1. Select the tracking-number column by clicking its letter.
2. Format it as Text. Right-click the column, choose “Format Cells”, pick “Text” and click “OK”. (Or on the Home tab, set the number format box to “Text”.)
3. Put the numbers in again. Changing the format doesn't bring back digits Excel has already changed. Paste the numbers again from their source, such as the courier's booking report.
4. Save as .xlsx or as “CSV UTF-8”.

Typing an apostrophe before a number ('123456789012) also stores it as text. When you open a CSV in Excel, don't double-click it: use Data → From Text/CSV and, before loading, set “Data Type Detection” to “Do not detect data types” so every column stays as text. If an Excel column you import holds tracking numbers stored as numbers, the column step warns you, because leading zeros are already gone.

From other spreadsheet apps

Set the tracking-number column to plain text before you type or paste the numbers, then save or download the file as Excel or CSV.

Files we accept

• .xlsx, an Excel workbook. If it has several sheets you choose one; we start on the first sheet that has rows, and mark hidden sheets as hidden.
• .xls, including the Excel downloads courier and marketplace portals give you, which are often a web page or text inside. We keep a converted .xlsx copy of the file with the import, under your file's own name, so every later step reads exactly what you uploaded.
• .csv in UTF-8 (with or without a byte-order mark) or UTF-16 LE, and .tsv or .txt. We work out whether it uses commas, semicolons or tabs.

A file can be up to 5 MB, with up to 50,000 rows and 100 columns in the sheet you import (columns after the first 100 aren't read), at most 1,000 sheets, cells of up to 32,767 characters (Excel's own limit), and file and sheet names of up to 255 characters. We can't take files with macros (.xlsm, .xlsb), Excel 5.0/95 workbooks, password-protected files, or files that grow past 50 MB once unpacked. A longer cell or name, or more rows or sheets, is never cut short: the file is refused, and in each case the message says how to change or save it so it can be uploaded.

Your plan's limits

Before you upload, the import page says what your plan allows and how many imports you have used this hour. Each import adds up to a set number of new shipments; rows past it are marked “Over limit” and the rest go ahead. Updating shipments you already track never counts against it.

An upload during onboarding counts as an import too. Choosing another sheet, another header row or other columns of a file you uploaded doesn't: it reads the same file again.

Pick the sheet and header row

After the upload you see the first rows of the sheet with their row numbers. The header row, the one with your column names, is found for you, even below a title or a note at the top; choose another under “Header row”, or “No header row” to name the columns A, B, C and so on. Rows above the header row are left out of the import. The import remembers the sheet and header row you chose, so “Continue” under Imports opens the file where you left it.

Match your columns

For each field we show a drop-down already set from your column names, and the first 10 rows of the file with their row numbers so you can check it. You must choose the tracking number column; everything else is optional.

“Save this mapping for next time” is ticked to begin with: a file with the same column names is matched for you next time, and the import says “Saved mapping applied”.

Courier names

A courier column can say anything: Delhivery Surface, BlueDart Apex, your warehouse's own short names. Names we know are matched for you. When the file has names we don't know, the “Match your courier names” step lists each one with its number of rows and our suggestion first. For each name choose a courier, “Work it out from each number” (the name is ignored and each number's courier is worked out from its format), or “Leave these rows out” (they stay in the problem rows, with their tracking numbers in full).

With “Remember these courier names for next time” ticked, your choices are applied to the next file automatically, shown as “Remembered: Delhivery” with a “Change” link. To undo a wrong one, change it to another courier or to “Work it out from each number”. A name for a courier that isn't available in TrackParcel for Business is never matched or remembered: its rows ask you to pick a courier.

Review and fix problem rows

Before importing you see how many rows are in each state:

• Ready: will be added.
• Restore: archived in this workspace; importing brings it back.
• Already tracking: skipped, or Will update when you tick “Update shipments already in TrackParcel”. A number this workspace tracks on one courier is that shipment, whatever courier the file names.
• Repeated in this file: the same number as an earlier row, merged into it.
• Example rows skipped: the template's example row.
• Needs courier: we couldn't tell the courier, or the number is listed with two couriers. Choose one for a row, or for a group of similar numbers at once.
• Invalid: not a tracking number we can use, with the reason.
• Over limit: past your plan's new shipments per import.
• Added without some details: the shipment goes ahead, but a detail (a phone, an email, a pincode, an order ID, tags or a note) doesn't pass its check and is left out.

“Download problem rows”, as Excel or CSV, gives you every row with a problem: a Row column with its row number in your file, your own columns exactly as they were (the full tracking number included), and a Problem column saying what to fix. Fix the rows and upload that file again: its columns are matched as before. For rows over your plan's limit, upload the problem rows file again in a later import.

Update shipments by uploading again

To change shipments you already track, upload a file with their tracking numbers and tick “Update shipments already in TrackParcel”. It replaces the label and order ID, adds tags and the note, and fills or replaces customer details. Empty cells never clear anything. The courier and the tracking number never change. A note is added once, even if you upload the same file again.

The easiest way round is to download your shipments as Excel (below), change the cells you want, and upload that file: its columns match by themselves.

Download statuses as Excel

When an import is done, “Download statuses (Excel)” gives you the shipments it added with their current status, from the import's last step or from Imports. To download any list, use Shipments → ⋯ → Export to Excel (or “Export CSV”). In the Excel file every tracking number, in both its forms, is a text cell holding exactly the characters you gave. Lists and downloads show the shipments added within your plan's history; older shipments are kept, not shown, and appear when you upgrade.

Customer details in your file

Customer names, phone numbers, emails and addresses in your file are kept with each shipment for your team, and can be erased if a customer asks. Erasing them also empties them in the copy of your file we keep, in the columns you matched to “Customer name”, “Customer phone”, “Customer email”, “Address”, “Label” and “Note”, on the sheet you imported. Columns you didn't match, such as a second phone number or address line, and the file's other sheets stay as you uploaded them. Tracking numbers are always kept. See Data export and privacy.

Import

1. Confirm, and the import runs in the background; a progress bar shows how far it has got. You can leave the page.
2. When it finishes you get a note in TrackParcel and a summary, with a link to a view of the shipments that file added, and its problem rows to download.
3. Each new shipment is checked with its courier as it is added.