Moving your parish directory off a spreadsheet

Before you import: clean four things

• • One person per row. A row of "John & Mary Smith" has to become two people in a household, and it is easier to split in the spreadsheet than afterwards.
• • Split first and last names into separate columns if they are combined.
• • Put each phone number in its own column, and pick one format.
• • Delete the empty rows and the notes-to-self at the bottom. Every spreadsheet has them; none of them should become a parishioner.

Then export to CSV

Both Excel and Google Sheets export CSV directly. Export the single sheet with your people on it, not the whole workbook. If you keep giving or sacrament data on separate tabs, export those separately — they import as their own records rather than as columns on a person.

Import, then deal with duplicates

CSV import is free on every Bellringer plan, including the free tier, specifically so that a parish evaluating the software can get its real data in before deciding anything. Map your columns on the way in.

Afterwards, run duplicate detection. A directory maintained by several people over several years always contains the same family twice, and finding those on import is much cheaper than discovering them when a household gets two copies of the same letter.

What you get that a spreadsheet cannot do

• • Email or text the people you just filtered, without exporting anything
• • Sacrament records, giving history, and ministries on the same record
• • Notes with an author and a date, instead of an anonymous comment
• • An audit log, so you can see who changed what
• • One copy of the truth, instead of three versions on three desktops

You can still leave

Every filtered list in Bellringer exports to CSV. If the parish decides in six months that this was not the right call, the data walks out the way it came in. That is worth checking before you commit to any system, not just this one.