Spinnza reads .xlsx files directly — no converting to CSV first, and no upload.
- Press Import list, or drag the workbook onto the import area.
- If the workbook has several sheets, choose the one you want.
- Choose the name column. Sample values are shown next to each so you can tell them apart.
- Optionally choose a weight column for bonus entries or ticket quantities.
- Check the row count, blanks and duplicates in the preview, then import.
What happens to formulas
Nothing. Spinnza reads the value Excel already calculated and saved, and never evaluates a formula. Macros and embedded objects are not opened at all, so a workbook from a stranger is just data.
Choosing the right worksheet
Workbooks collect sheets. An entries workbook often has the live sheet, a copy somebody made before editing, and a pivot or summary tab. All of them appear in the picker, including sheets that were hidden — those are labelled hidden rather than left out, because the list you want is sometimes on the tab somebody tidied away.
The row count next to each column is the quickest way to tell a real entry list from a stale copy: the sheet with 482 filled names is the one you collected, and the one with 61 is from three days ago.
What Excel does to usernames
Excel is helpful in ways that quietly damage entry lists, and it does it when the file is saved, not when Spinnza reads it. Worth checking before you export:
- Leading zeros disappear. A ticket number stored as 0012345 becomes 12345 unless the column is formatted as Text.
- Long numeric IDs turn into scientific notation — a sixteen-digit order number shows as 1.23457E+15 and loses its last digits for good.
- Names that look like dates get converted. Entrants called MAR 5 or handles like 3-4 can come back as dates, and a date in a name column is a name you can no longer contact.
- A username typed with a leading apostrophe in Excel keeps the apostrophe out of the cell value but not always out of an export.
The fix for all four is the same: format the column as Text before anyone types or pastes into it. If the damage is already saved, the original export from the platform is usually still intact — go back to that rather than repairing cells by hand.
Several tickets on one row
If your workbook is one row per person with a Quantity or Bonus entries column, do not expand it into repeated rows by hand. Choose that column as the weight during import and the draw uses it directly, which is both exact and visible — the count under the wheel then shows people and total chances as separate numbers.
If the file will not open
Some files — .xls from a very old version, or an export that is really an HTML table with the wrong extension — will not read. Open it in Excel or Numbers, save as CSV, and upload that instead.
The same goes for a workbook over 10 MB, which is almost always weight from formatting, images or a pivot cache rather than from the names. Copy the one column you need into a fresh sheet and save that.