Import File

InstaCharts supports many spreadsheet file types including .csv, .psv, .tsv, various excel files, .ods, .json and .jsonl.

To sync a spreadsheet from an outside datasource, check out our Import from Google Sheets guide.

New Sheet Dialog

To import a new spreadsheet, from the dashboard, click Add New Sheet.

To load a spreadsheet file click the left option, Load file.

Choose from loading a file from your device, an outside data source, or pasting in text from the clipboard

File Preview

Some kinds of files (like .csv, .psv, .tsv) don’t contain their file encoding types, which help provide the correct character set for the file.

To preview what your imported file will look like, toggle on “Show File Preview”. From the next window, you will be able to change your spreadsheet’s encoding type if the character set doesn’t look correct.

File Preview - Make sure characters are displaying correctly before importing your spreadsheet

Tip

The most common modern character encoding is Unicode UTF-8. If Auto doesn’t work for your spreadsheet, try UTF-8 next.

Imported Spreadsheet

Once your sheet has been imported, it will automatically open to a chart created with your data.

A chart is instantly created from the uploaded spreadsheet

Note

Free accounts are limited to files 2MB or less and will only process up to 500 rows per spreadsheet

Check Formatting

Click the Data tab to view your processed spreadsheet data. Column types are autodetected based on the data each contains. Column names are pulled from the header row of the spreadsheet.

To edit column names, click Edit Column from each column’s header menu on the data tab.

View spreadsheet data on the Data Tab

Editing Data

Need to do some light editing of the data? View how to edit individual data cells or replace all values within a column.

There are also several Data Transformations available in InstaCharts to reshape your data.