Adding Contacts

ContactDrive is home for all of your contacts, no matter the source, so there’s several ways to add contacts.

Add a single contact

Click on the Contacts icon on the left sidebar. When you create a new workspace, the page will have only one contact in the table — you. Add a single contact by clicking on the blue "Add Contact" button, shown above.

After clicking that button, you'll see a form with a place for everything. Add what details you have (must include either a name or email address) and then click the green “Save” button at the bottom.

If ContactDrive thinks you might be trying to add a contact that already exists in your account, it will give you a warning and the option to update that contact, or plow ahead with the new one if you're sure.

Note that when you add a Nickname to a contact, that will be used instead of the contact’s first name throughout the app. So if “Willoughby” actually goes by “Bill”, just drop it in the nickname field. It's an easy way to keep the first name as a formal legal / donor / voter first name and still make sure the app prompts you to call the person by their informal day-to-day name.

Add a list of contacts from a file

If you have a list of contacts in Excel or another system, like an email or ecommerce platform, that you hope to add to ContactDrive, you’re in luck! Instead of clicking the blue "Add Contact" button, click the down-arrow next to it, then click "Import CSV."

For more detail about uploading a CSV, please refer to our article on Import Tips and Uploading CSV files.

One note: despite ContactDrive's powerful features and boyish good looks, it cannot import XLS or XLSX files — only .CSV. So be sure you save your Excel file as CSV before proceeding with the import steps, and please, do read these import tips to save you some hassle later. Like having a header row on your file. Always keep the field names in the header. It's just science.