WordPress Contact List Plugin – Bulk Edit Contacts, Export, Import

The Contact List – Premium Staff Listing, Business Directory & Address Book plugin allows you to create and manage contacts on your WordPress site. You can easily create a contact directory website with groups, maps, etc. However, the bulk actions of the plugin are too limited.

That’s why, in this tutorial, we will show you how to bulk edit contacts from the Contact List plugin, using an intuitive spreadsheet. You’ll be able to view and manage contacts in a spreadsheet, bulk manage your contacts’ data, export contacts to a CSV file, and import contacts from a CSV file into your WordPress site.

Instead of managing your contacts the old way, which has really limited bulk actions and requires you to open and edit contacts one by one…

You’ll be able to use an intuitive spreadsheet that contains advanced search and bulk edit tools, as well as export and import tools to boost your productivity.

Install WP Sheet Editor – Post Types

You can bulk manage your contacts by installing and activating the WP Sheet Editor – Post Types plugin. It allows you to view and manage posts, pages and custom post types using intuitive spreadsheets. It contains advanced search and bulk edit tools to boost your productivity. If you want to work offline, you can export your contacts to a CSV file and edit in Excel, and then you can import the contacts from the CSV to your WordPress site.

Here’s how you can install and activate the WP Sheet Editor – Post Types plugin on your website:

1. Go to Plugins > Add New Plugin.
2. Click on Upload plugin.
3. Click on Choose file.
4. Locate the file on your computer.
5. Click on Install now.
6. Click on Activate plugin.
7. Enter your license and click on Activate License.

Set up the contact list spreadsheet

After installing and activating WP Sheet Editor, you can set up the spreadsheet by going to WP Sheet Editor > Setup spreadsheet.

Once there, select the Contact List post type and click on Save.

Now you will see the columns manager, where you can drag the columns to the left or right side to enable or disable them. Once you’re done, click on Save.

This is what the contact list spreadsheet looks like. Now you can start managing your contacts in the spreadsheet, running advanced searches, bulk editing thousands of items at once, etc.

Bulk edit contacts in the spreadsheet

The spreadsheet allows you to edit any cell according to the field type. For example, you can edit text and number fields just as you would in Excel or Google Sheets. Just click on the cell and start adding or editing the data.

You can edit date fields by clicking on the calendar icon of each cell. It will display a date and time selector as a popup where you can select the dates and times.

Dropdown fields display the options for you to select the one you want.

Upload file fields allow you to paste URLs as simple text or click on the upload file button of each cell to open the media library as a popup to upload the files or select the files from your media library.

This is what the Add media popup looks like when you open it from an upload file cell, like the featured image column.

Taxonomy term fields such as contact group, category, tag, etc., allow you to select the terms easily by clicking on the term you want to select. If you start typing, you’ll see terms matching your text, and you can also add new terms by writing the text and clicking on Add Option.

Once you’re done editing your contacts in the spreadsheet, you need to click on Save to apply all the changes.

Advanced contact list search

WP Sheet Editor allows you to perform advanced contact list searches to find specific groups of contacts. For example, you can search for contacts by title, featured image, address, zip code, group, first name, last name, job title, etc.

You need to use the Search tool.

In this example, we will do a combined search to find contacts that belong to a specific group and are within a range of zip codes.

We need to select these values in the Search tool:

• Enter Group: Add the group you want to find here.
• Tick the Enable advanced filters checkbox and select these values:
  • Filter 1:
    • Field: Cl Zip Code
    • Operator: >=
    • Value: Add the lower zip code.
  • Click on Add new to create a new advanced filter.
  • Filter 2:
    • Field: Cl Zip Code
    • Operator: =<
    • Value: Add the lower zip code.
• Click on Run search.

After running the search, you’ll see all the contacts matching the search filters displayed in the spreadsheet. You can view the search filters above the spreadsheet.

Bulk edit multiple contacts at once

In addition to editing contacts in the spreadsheet, WP Sheet Editor allows you to edit values of a field in thousands of contacts at once.

For example, if you want to assign a new group to all the filtered contacts, you can use the Bulk Edit tool to perform that bulk update.

Remember that in the previous section we filtered the contacts by group, so we will move them to another group by selecting these values:

• Select the rows that you want to edit: Edit all the rows from my current search (including non-visible rows)
• What field do you want to edit: Group
• Select the type of edit: Set value
• We will replace the existing terms with these terms: Add the name of the new group here, even if this term doesn’t exist yet.
• Click on Execute Now.

As you can see, we have bulk updated the contacts’ group; you can see the new values in the Group column.

Export contacts to a CSV file

If you want to export your contacts to a CSV file, you can do it by opening the Export tool.

Once you’re in the Export tool, you need to select these values in order to export your contacts:

• What columns do you want to export: Select the columns/fields you want to export.
• Which rows do you want to export: All the rows from my current search.
• What app will you use to edit this file: In this example, we will select Microsoft Excel (Office 365)
• Name of this export: You can add a name and reuse these settings in the future.
• Click on Start new export.

As you can see, we have exported our contacts to a CSV file. Now we can start editing existing contacts or adding new contacts in Excel, Google Sheets, or any other CSV editor.

Import contacts from the CSV file

If you have created or updated your contacts in a CSV file, you can import the contacts easily.

Just open the Import tool.

Now you need to select the following values in the Import tool:

• Source: CSV file from my computer.
• Click on Choose File and locate the CSV on your computer.
• Click on Next.

You can Import all the columns or Select individual columns to import.

Select if you want to update or create contacts.

In this example, we will create new contacts and update existing contacts, so we will match the existing contacts by ID.

Once you select the values, click on Next.

Finally, you’ll see a preview. If everything is OK in the preview, you need to click on The preview is fine, start import.

WP Sheet Editor – Post Types allows you to bulk manage contacts from the WordPress Contact List plugin. You can bulk edit with a few clicks, manage your contacts in a spreadsheet, export contacts to a CSV file, import contacts from a CSV file, etc.