OfficeTalk lets you import company records from Comma Separated Values (.CSV) files. A typical CSV file format is shown in the table below:
| "Name", | "Address1", | "Address2", | "Town", | "Postcode" |
| "Softalk Ltd", | "1 May Sq", | "Hurley St", | "Aylesford", | "HP17 7DD" |
| "DSA", | "Bydell Hse" | "Sudbury Hill", | "Harrow", | "HA1 3NJ" |
| "Acme Ltd", | "Acme Rd", | "Acme Hill", | "London", | "SE1" |
| "Intera Ltd", | "Chiltern Hs", | "45 Stn Road", | "Henley", | "RG9 1AT" |
| "PPG", | "1 Pit Way", | "Murray Rd", | "Staines", | "ST1 1DR" |
CSV File Format
The first line in a CSV file is called the header line and this must always be present. The header defines the field names of the CSV file. The following lines are individual company records. Most database packages will provide a CSV format output of their data. Once you have a file in this format, you may import the data into OfficeTalk in the following way:
If you have a CSV file which contains both company and contact information in the same record, then you should perform two imports; firstly import the company information, and then, using the same CSV file, import the contact information.
Firstly, select Import CSV Records from the File menu within Contact mode.
The Import CSV Records Command
A CSV Import dialog box will appear:
CSV Import dialog box
1. Select the CSV file containing the data that you wish to import. You can do this by pressing the 
button and
selecting the file from the File dialog box.
2. Ensure that Company is selected in the Import Type pull down list. Note that if you wish all the imported companies to be visible only to you then select Personal Company from the Import Type pull down list.
3. The OfficeTalk Fields list will contain the available fields in a company record. The Available Fields list will contain a list
of fields found in the CSV file. You can connect the CSV file fields to OfficeTalk fields by selecting an item from each list and
pressing the 
button. The connection will appear in the Connections list at the bottom of the dialog box.
4. If the CSV file has quoted fields (every field is enclosed by a pair of “” characters) then ensure that the Quoted Fields check box is checked. Sometimes fields are separated by TAB characters instead of commas. If this is true ensure that Tab is selected from the Delimiter pull down list.
5. Press the 
button. OfficeTalk will begin importing the records. A Percentage window will appear informing
you of the progress of the import. You can cancel the import at any time by pressing the Cancel button on the percentage
window.
If a company/contact group is currently selected, then the Import into current group check box will be enabled. If you check this box, OfficeTalk will import the data and will automatically put each record into the currently selected group.
Note: Importing companies does just that, it does not import contact information. If you have a CSV file containing both company and contact information then you must firstly import the companies and then import the contacts using the same CSV file. For details on how to do this, see below.
To import your contact records follow steps 1-5 above ensuring that Contact is selected in the Import Type pull down list. If you wish all the imported contacts to be visible only to you then select Personal Contact from Import Type pull down list.
If you have a CSV file which contains both company and contact information in the same record, then you should perform two imports; firstly import the company information, as described above, and then, using the same CSV file, import the contact information, but ensuring that the [Company] field in the OfficeTalk Fields list is connected to the field representing the name of the company in the Available Fields list. OfficeTalk will then be able to associate all the contacts with the relevant companies.