The Events Calendar – How to Export, Import and Bulk Edit

We love events. The world would not be the same if we didn’t gather together for sharing experiences with others. It’s great to have tools such as The Events Calendar plugin, which help us create and manage our events on WordPress.

Related tutorial: The Events Calendar – Export and Import Data with Google Sheets

It’s a great plugin, one of the best options we have when it comes to creating events. However, its bulk actions are really limited. Also, we can’t export all our events’ information, nor can we create events from a CSV file created with Excel or Google Sheets.

A great solution

That’s why we want to introduce you to the Events Spreadsheet plugin. It works perfectly with The Events Calendar, and it allows you to:

• See all your events on a spreadsheet
• Edit values just as you do in Excel or Google Sheets
• Create hundreds of copies from an event
• Do advanced searches on your events
• Export your events to a CSV file
• Import new events and changes using a CSV file
• Bulk edit thousands of events in seconds
• Etc.

Video Guide

Text Guide

After installing and activating the plugin, you need to open the spreadsheet by going to WP Sheet Editor > Edit Events. You’ll see a spreadsheet containing all your events and their complete, detailed information.

Here’s how you can export, import, and bulk edit events:

Export events to a CSV file

With the Events Spreadsheet, you can quickly export all your events created with The Events Calendar and download them as a CSV file. You just need to start by clicking on Export on the top toolbar.

Download the CSV to your computer

In the Export tool, you need to do the following to export all your events to a CSV file.

• Click on Select all or enter specific fields in What columns do you want to export.
• Tick the I understand it will export the posts from my current search checkbox.
• OPTIONAL: Tick the I will edit this file with Microsoft Excel checkbox. The thing is that sometimes Excel shows all the values in a single cell and it does not recognize the comma as separator. This fixes that problem.
• Click on Start new export and the CSV file containing all your events will be downloaded to your computer.

Edit the exported CSV file

Now you can edit any of your events’ values in Excel or Google Sheets.

For example, we’ll change the status from draft to publish. You can edit any other field, add new information to the empty cells, etc.

Once you’ve applied the changes, just save them, and you’ll be ready to import the info back to WP.

Import events from a CSV file

To import a CSV file containing new events or changes applied to the existing events in WP, you need to start by clicking on Import on the top toolbar.

Select the CSV file you’ll import

Just do this:

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

• Click on Import all the columns.

Now you need to decide how you’ll import the info and match the key CSV fields to the WordPresss Fields to synchronize the information and make sure the plugin will import the values in the right places.

Just do this:

• Do you want to update or create items: Update existing items, ignore new items.
• Field 1: CSV Field: record_id
• Field 1: WordPress Field: ID

This will match the IDs in the CSV file with the IDs in WP so the plugin imports the info correctly.

Complete the import process

Finally, you’ll have a preview of how the info will be imported to the Events Spreadsheet, so just click on The preview is fine, start import to import all your info.

And this is how the info will look after you import the changes from the CSV to WP.

Bulk edit events in seconds

You can quickly edit thousands of events with just some simple clicks. We’ll show you how to change the status from draft to published in all your events. Of course, you can apply any other change you want.

You need to start up by opening the Bulk Edit tool, which is on the toolbar and opens with one click on it.

Filter the events you’ll edit

Now you can quickly filter all the events you’ll edit. For example, you can search for all your draft events in order to edit their status. Just select the I want to search rows to update option in the Select the rows that you want to update dropdown to open the search tool.

To filter all the drafts, you need to enter Draft in the Status field and click on Run search.

Yes! It’s that simple!

Now just select these values to edit all your filtered events:

• Select the rows that you want to update: I want to search rows to update
• What field do you want to edit: Status
• Select type of edit: Set value
• Replace existing value with this value: Published
• Click on Execute now and the plugin will edit all the filtered events.

With the Events Spreadsheet, you can completely simplify the way in which you manage your events created with The Events Calendar.

You can export and import info, so you can work offline. Also, you can save a lot of time bulk editing thousands of events in seconds instead of spending hours and hours editing them one by one.