Data Tools

Data Tools lets account admins bulk-import and bulk-edit data across every module in Lextree, instead of working one record at a time. Open Admin → Data Tools to see every dataset in your account — your Records (Organizations, People, Contacts) and each module’s dataset — with an Import records icon and a Manage records icon next to each one.

How Data Tools Works

Most of Lextree answers to what you’re granted: your module role, your sharing basis, your access groups. Data Tools is the exception. It answers to your role instead — specifically, whether you’re an account admin — and it reaches every enabled module regardless of what you’re granted there.

An account admin with no module grants at all can bulk-import a thousand contracts through Data Tools. That same admin can then be unable to open the Contracts module and read a single one of them. See how admin access works if that split surprises you.

Importing Records into Lextree

Importing brings existing records into Lextree from a spreadsheet — useful for a first migration, or for adding a large batch of new records at once.

The Five-Step Wizard

The import wizard walks you through five steps: Upload → Match columns → Resolve → Preview → Done. Your progress is saved as you go, so you can leave and return to a partly finished import later from Data Tools, or discard it.

Import in dependency order: organizations and people before the records that name them, or those rows will not match.

From Resolve or Preview, you can jump back to an earlier step — to fix a mapping, say — without losing your other choices. Nothing writes to your records until you click Import on the Preview step.

On Match columns, the wizard proposes how your columns map to fields. A column with nowhere to go can become a new field on the spot with Create a custom field….

Before uploading, click Export template to download a CSV with the exact column headers and field types the wizard expects. This template isn’t the same file as a list export, which shows what’s on screen rather than what the importer accepts. A list export is not a substitute for the template; its columns will not map the way the template’s do.

Recording a Timeline Event

A record’s status isn’t a field you fill in directly — it’s read from the newest entry on the record’s Timeline. To bring in a dated event alongside a record, map three columns: Status: Event, Status: Date, and Status: Description.

An event needs a date. The wizard blocks Continue on Match columns if you map an event column without a date column — a row can’t produce an undated timeline entry.

A column named just Status is recognized but rejected — the wizard tells you to replace it with these three columns instead. A plain status value and a dated timeline event aren’t the same kind of data.

Multi-Part Columns and Suggestions

Some fields import as more than one column. A website needs Website: Text and Website: URL together; a jurisdiction needs Jurisdiction: Country and Jurisdiction: Entity Legal Form, with an optional Subdivision. Match columns recognizes these paired columns and explains what’s still needed, even before you map them.

After a successful import, the Done page can offer Automation Suggestions — one card per template whose conditions the imported records now match. Accept bulk-creates the suggested event for every matching record in one step; Dismiss declines. Review these before you move on, since a large import can generate a lot of them.

Bulk Editing Records

Editing works differently from importing: instead of a wizard, you act on records already in Lextree through a dataset’s Manage grid.

Selecting Records to Edit

Click a dataset’s Manage records icon to open its grid. The Manage grid works differently from other tables in Lextree. Clicking a row selects it instead of opening it, because the grid is built for acting on many records at once rather than viewing one.

Filter the grid down to the records you want first, then use the checkbox in the column header to select all of them. That checkbox selects only what the current filter is showing, not your whole dataset — so filter before you select.

Editing Opt-In Fields

With records selected, click Edit in the toolbar. The edit drawer works opt-in per field: pick a field from “Select a field to update…” and set its value.

Only the fields you add are written. Every other field on every selected record stays untouched.

Saving Changes

Click Save to apply the bulk update to every selected record. Save greys out and shows an “Updating records…” indicator for the whole run.

Clicking Save again mid-run does nothing — the first click is still working. When it finishes, a confirmation reports how many records were updated.

Bulk Delete and Export

Two more actions live in the same Manage grid toolbar as Edit.

Bulk Delete

Delete moves the selected records to the trash. There’s no confirmation dialog, because trash is reversible. Restoring or permanently deleting happens from the Trash page, and the same cascade rules apply as everywhere else in Lextree.

Exporting from the Grid

Export works the same way it does on any list page: it downloads the current view as a CSV. On the Manage grid, that’s useful for capturing a before-and-after snapshot. Export before a bulk edit, run the edit, then export again to confirm the change landed the way you expected.