If you’re starting out or moving from another tool, you don’t need to add students one by one. Upload a CSV (a spreadsheet saved as comma-separated values) and LessonLoop brings your whole roster in at once — with a preview so nothing is saved until you’re happy.
Where the importer lives
The spreadsheet importer lives in Settings → Advanced → “Data import (CSV, legacy)”.
| Way in | How |
|---|---|
| Settings | Open Settings, choose Advanced, then Data import (CSV, legacy). |
| Search | Press ⌘K / Ctrl-K and run “Import students (CSV)”. |
| Setup | It also appears as the add-your-students step in the onboarding wizard. |
“Legacy” isn’t a warning. It’s the older, simpler importer, kept deliberately because it does one thing nothing else does: it takes an arbitrary spreadsheet and lets you map its columns to LessonLoop’s fields by hand. If your list came out of a school office rather than a lesson-management app, this is the tool.
Worth knowing Import is not a button on the Students page. The Students page is for adding families one at a time — the importers live in Settings → Advanced.
What to put in your spreadsheet
Each row is one student. The columns LessonLoop reads are:
- Name
- Phone
- Date of birth — most common formats work (e.g.
12/03/2014or12 Mar 2014); the preview flags any date it can’t read or that isn’t a real past date. - Instrument
- Guardian name and guardian email (for younger students)
You don’t need every column — a name is enough to create a student, and you can fill in the rest later. Column headings don’t have to match exactly; you map your columns to LessonLoop’s fields during the preview step.
Import your students
- Go to Settings → Advanced → “Data import (CSV, legacy)”.
- Upload your CSV file.
- Map the columns — confirm which of your spreadsheet’s columns is the name, the email, the instrument, and so on.
- Review the preview. LessonLoop checks every row and tells you how many are ready to import. Each row needs a first and last name — any row missing one is flagged so you can fix it before going ahead. The import is all-or-nothing, so the preview needs to be clean before you can continue.
- When the preview looks right, confirm the import. Only now are the students saved.
Good to know Every row becomes a new student, so import a fresh roster rather than re-uploading the same file — importing the same people twice creates duplicate students. Guardians are the exception: if a guardian's email matches one you already have, LessonLoop links to that existing guardian instead of creating another.
Moving from another tool? Use the other door
If you’re switching from another teaching or scheduling app, this importer is the wrong tool — it brings across students and nothing else, and you’d spend the following week rebuilding the timetable and the balances by hand.
Use Settings → Advanced → “Bring your school in” instead. It takes people, the timetable, what each family owes and your term dates together, gives you a reconciliation to check against your old system, has an undo — and sends no emails to families while it runs. See bring your school in.
Bringing across just a teaching week from a calendar feed? That’s import your timetable.
Was this out of date or unclear? Tell us — we keep these guides matched to the live app.