How to move your wine cellar spreadsheet into an app without losing data

Most collections start life as a wine cellar spreadsheet. It works well for a while. Then the cellar grows, a second fridge or an off-site locker appears, and the sheet becomes something you avoid opening. Moving to a cellar app is the obvious next step. The worry is losing years of careful notes along the way.

You don't have to lose anything. With an hour of tidying beforehand, the move is straightforward. Below, we walk through the cleanup that matters most, then show how the import works in Selara Sommelier, whether you start from a file, a label photo or a merchant invoice.

Before you start, make a safe copy

Save a copy of your spreadsheet and do all your cleanup in the copy. Keep the original untouched. If anything looks odd after import, you can always go back and compare.

While you're at it, note roughly how many bottles and rows you have. That number is a handy check once the import is done.

Step 1: Clean up your wine cellar spreadsheet columns

Spreadsheets grow organically, so columns often hold more than one thing. A cellar app works best when each column holds exactly one kind of fact.

The core columns to aim for are:

• Producer, meaning the domaine, château or winery
• Wine name, meaning the cuvée, vineyard or clos
• Vintage, as a four-digit year or "NV" for non-vintage wines
• Appellation or region, and country
• Color or type, such as red, white, rosé, sparkling or fortified
• Bottle size
• Quantity, as a plain number
• Location and bin
• Price paid per bottle, plus purchase date and merchant if you track them
• Notes

If one column says "Château Léoville Las Cases 2010", split producer and vintage into their own columns. If quantity sometimes reads "6 (1 gifted)", move the explanation to Notes and leave a number behind. Small fixes like these do more for a clean import than anything else.

Section headers can stay. Plenty of collectors write "France" on one row and leave the cells below blank until the next country. Selara Sommelier's importer is built to recognize that carry-forward pattern, so you don't have to fill every blank by hand. It's still worth checking that each section header sits in a sensible column.

Step 2: Standardize bottle sizes

Bottle size is one of the easiest things to lose in a move, and one of the most important. A magnum and a half bottle of the same wine are very different holdings.

Pick one convention and use it everywhere. Volumes are the clearest:

• 375 ml for a half bottle
• 750 ml for a standard bottle
• 1.5 L for a magnum
• 3 L for a double magnum

Volumes beat names for a reason. Some large-format names mean different sizes in different regions. A Jeroboam, for example, is 3 liters in Champagne but 4.5 liters in Bordeaux. Writing the volume removes the guesswork.

Selara Sommelier reads common size phrasing such as "1.5L", "375 ml" or "magnum" when it maps your file. A consistent column just leaves less to interpret.

Step 3: Separate storage locations from bins

Think of a location as a place, such as the home cellar, the kitchen fridge or a storage facility. A bin is a spot within that place, like a rack, a shelf or a slot. Many spreadsheets blend the two into one cell, like "Basement R3". Split them into two columns if you can.

Standardize the names, too. "Basement", "basement cellar" and "Bsmt" should all become one name before you import.

When you import into Selara Sommelier, location and bin stay separate. You can match the location names in your file to locations you've already set up, create new ones, or choose a default storage location for the whole import. If your bins nest, say Room, then Rack, then Slot, nested bins are available on Grand Cru and above. Premier Cru keeps storage flat and simple.

Step 4: Deal with duplicates

Duplicates creep in when the same wine is bought twice or copied from an old tab. Before importing, sort by producer, wine name and vintage, then scan for repeated rows.

A good rule is one row per wine, per vintage, per bottle size, per location, with the quantity column doing the counting. If you bought the same wine at different prices and want to keep both prices, keep two rows and add a short note explaining why.

Then there are the bottles you've already drunk. If they still sit in the sheet with a quantity of zero, move them to a separate tab. Selara Sommelier keeps drunk bottles in History, and there's a dedicated Import history option for those rows, so they don't clutter your active cellar.

Step 5: Import into Selara Sommelier

Selara Sommelier gives you three ways to bring wine in, and you can mix them.

Upload the spreadsheet

Drag and drop your file. Selara Sommelier accepts .csv, .tsv, .tab, .txt, .xlsx, .xls, .json, .numbers, or .xml, so you can usually upload straight from Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, exported as CSV or Excel. Each file can hold up to 10,000 rows and 25 MB, on every plan.

If your workbook has several tabs, you pick which ones to import. Selara Sommelier then matches your columns to its fields and flags anything it wants you to check. Before anything lands in your cellar, you see your wine laid out in a spreadsheet-style preview.

Changing your mind is easy. Every import is listed, and you can remove one if you uploaded the wrong file. Removing it also removes the bottles it added. Step away mid-import and your upload is saved, so you can pick up where you left off.

Snap a photo of the label

Got a bottle or two that never made it into the sheet? Photograph the label with your phone. Selara Sommelier reads the label and fills in the details for you to approve. It copes well with dim restaurant lighting and even faded handwritten labels. On Grand Cru and above, label deep fill goes further and researches fields that aren't printed on the label.

Upload an invoice as a PDF or photo

Bought a mixed case? Drop in a merchant PDF or an auction settlement and Selara Sommelier picks up the line items you want to import. You don't even need the file. A photo of the paper invoice, or of a screen showing one, works just as well.

A five-minute check after the import

Compare the bottle count with the number you noted at the start. Spot-check a handful of wines against the shelf, especially large formats and anything stored in an unusual place. Then set up the columns you want to see. In Selara Sommelier you choose which columns show and in what order, so the cellar book looks the way you think about your wine.

If you're still deciding how to prepare your file, our companion checklist, tips for cleaning up a wine inventory spreadsheet, covers the details in quick-reference form. Coming from another cellar app rather than a spreadsheet? See how to switch to Selara Sommelier from another cellar app.

Bring your sheet along

Your spreadsheet holds years of buying, tasting and remembering, and none of it needs to stay behind. Selara Sommelier works on iPhone and the web, and Premier Cru is free for cellars of up to 100 bottles in one location. When you're ready, see how importing works.