Bulk importing many-to-many association labels

[athoman]

Is there a way to import an excel file to mass update labels.

Here's my scenario:
I have companies and contacts with several specific labels to indicate what sort of general job and communication within the company they have.

Some contacts are the same labeled assocation for several companies. Some companies are matched to several seperate contacts.

I currently have a spreadsheet with a row for each of the companies. I have columns for the association label title, in those respective cells I then have the record IDs for all the contacts who should get that label for that company. However, hubspot doesn't like this because when importing there is no option to use a column for a label to grab all the record ids from that row. Intuitively, I'd think that should work, but maybe there is a different way to do it?

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the tag @BérangèreL 😊

Hi there @athoman and welcome to the Community! 

My first thought was that this might be stretching HubSpot a bit with association labels, and I'd think about a custom property. But I re-read your scenario and I don't think that would work well, as it sounds like you want to be able to see the associations in record views, and see how the connections all interweave, so I looked around and here's what I think might help based on a few HubSpot resources (here and here). 

Yes, it is possible to import an Excel file to mass update association labels in HubSpot, but you'll need to adjust your spreadsheet format to match HubSpot's import requirements.  However, I think you might need to restructure your spreadsheet. 

Instead of having a single row per company with multiple contact IDs in each label column, you'll need to create a row for each company-contact-label combination. Your new spreadsheet structure should look like this:

Company Record ID	Contact Record ID	Association Label
123	456	Manage
123	789	Billing Contact
234	456	Manager

Of course, this means you need HubSpot record IDs, which only get created after an import. So that adds a layer of complexity to the process, but that's what I'd look at. 

Then for the import, here's what that would look like. 

1. Prepare your Excel file with the columns: Company ID, Contact ID, and Association Label.
2. In HubSpot, navigate to Settings > Import & Export > Go to import.
3. Choose "Start an import" and select "File from computer."
4. Select "One file = multiple associations" and choose both Companies and Contacts as the objects you're importing.
5. Upload your prepared Excel file.
6. Map the columns as follows:
   • Company ID to "Company ID"
   • Contact ID to "Contact ID"
   • Association Label to "Association Label"
7. Choose "Update existing Company only" and "Update existing Contacts only" in the import settings.
8. Review and complete the import.

A couple of cautionary notes I'd keep in mind:

• Ensure that the association labels already exist in your HubSpot account before importing
• You can set multiple labels for a relationship by separating them with a semicolon in the Association Label column (e.g., "Manager; Billing Contact")
• If you're using paired labels (e.g., manager and employee), include only one label in the import because HubSpot will automatically assign the corresponding label to the other object
• This method works for Professional and Enterprise HubSpot subscriptions

I hope this helps! 

[BérangèreL]

Hi @athoman and welcome, it's a pleasure to have you here! 🎉

Thank you for asking the HubSpot Community and sharing this detailed example!
I love you asked this question because imports can be tricky at times.

I have checked for you and I can see on this article "Import records and activities"  (there is also an example of how to set it up) that if you’re importing and associating objects, to import association labels (Professional and Enterprise only): you can click the dropdown menu in the Import as column, then select Association label. Importing a new association label will not overwrite an existing association label. The imported label will be added to the record as an additional association label.

I'd like to share also this article "Requirements to associate records" which can help you set up the import files correctly.

If you are getting errors while importing, you'll want to have a look at this: "Review and troubleshoot import errors".

I'd love to put you in touch with some of our Top Experts who have great experience and insights when it comes to importing data: Hi @danmoyle, @GeorgeBThomas and @AdamLPW do you have suggestions to help @athoman, please?

And please @athoman, let me know if there is anything else I can help with.
I'll be delighted to do so! ❤️

Thank you so much ⭐ and have a wonderful day!

Best,
Bérangère

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