Spreadsheet
The spreadsheet is the everyday answer to “give me my data in a form I can read and edit”. Settings → Backup → Spreadsheet exports the whole logbook as one workbook; Settings → Import → Spreadsheet takes it back. Between the two you can fix a misspelled hotel on two hundred rows, add a year of old flights in a table, or review every cruise stop in one place.
The workbook
Section titled “The workbook”A sheet per table: flights; cruises and their stops; houses and their stays; places and their visits. Every sheet is readable and filterable in any spreadsheet program — real numeric and date cells, not text that looks like numbers.
Column A carries the row’s id. That is the whole contract:
- a row that comes back with an id updates the record it names;
- a row without one is created;
- an id that is not yours is refused, never applied;
- an empty cell leaves the existing value alone — it does not blank a field.
Flights travel with the eighteen fields you would actually edit in a table. Airports travel as IATA codes rather than coordinates: a code is what you can type and check, and the server resolves it into a real airport, which is what makes adding a missing flight from a row possible at all. Changing a code moves the flight; an unknown code is refused rather than quietly leaving the old route. Countries on the lodging and places sheets are codes too, so one sheet cannot hold four spellings for two countries.
Importing: three modes
Section titled “Importing: three modes”Every import is previewed before anything is written, per sheet — how many rows would be created, updated, or deleted. Then you choose what to do with what is already there:
| Mode | Creates | Updates rows the file names | Deletes rows the file omits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add only | yes | no — an existing entry is never touched | no |
| Merge (default) | yes | yes | no |
| Replace contents | yes | yes | yes |
Replace contents is the only mode that can lose data, so it is fenced: it takes a full backup before writing a single row, shows how many entries would disappear, and will not proceed unless you confirm that number. If the backup cannot be made, the import does not run. An empty sheet deletes nothing at all — clearing a domain has to be asked for row by row, never by handing over a blank tab.
The run lands in the import log as one batch and can be reverted whole.
What comes back, and what is export-only
Section titled “What comes back, and what is export-only”| Sheet | Export | Import |
|---|---|---|
| Flights | yes | yes |
| Cruises | yes | yes |
| Cruise stops | yes | export-only |
| Houses (lodgings) | yes | yes |
| Stays | yes | export-only |
| Places | yes | yes |
| Visits | yes | yes — a visit imports against its place; several visits to the same place on the same day stay several visits |
The import panel says which sheets it will ignore, instead of leaving you to find out that editing a stay in the workbook did nothing.
Recipes
Section titled “Recipes”- Fix one field on many rows — export, filter the sheet, edit the column, import in Merge. Only the cells you changed move.
- Add old flights — new rows on the Flights sheet with the airports as IATA codes, no id, import in Add only so nothing existing can be touched by accident.
- Move the logbook to another instance — export here, import there in Add only. Ids from the old instance are not yours on the new one, so clear column A first.
- Audit a domain — export and read; nothing to import.
Spreadsheet or JSON export or backup?
Section titled “Spreadsheet or JSON export or backup?”Three things answer “get my data out”, and they are not the same:
- The spreadsheet is for reading and editing. It carries your travel, not your settings, tokens or photographs.
- The JSON export (Export all data) is for moving an account to another instance: twelve domains, settings included, keys excluded.
- A backup restores an instance: the database dump plus every upload directory. See Backups & Restore.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”- Stays and cruise stops do not come back yet. Edit those in the app.
- Photographs are not in the workbook.
- No partial-sheet replace. Replace contents treats every sheet in the file as the full list for that table; to replace one domain, export, keep only that sheet, and read the preview twice.
- A workbook from another instance carries foreign ids. They are refused; strip column A.
- The 18 flight fields are the editable ones. Enrichment fields (live tracking, provider snapshots) are not in the sheet and cannot be edited there.