Importing your data

Letterboxd members can import data in one of three ways: directly to their account (as watched films and/or diary entries, with optional ratings), to a new or existing list, or to their watchlist.

When importing data we support the following formats:

  • Letterboxd import format (CSV)
  • IMDb export files (CSV)
  • Delicious Library v2 or 3 export files (XML)*
  • ICheckMovies export files (custom)

*Delicious Library files are only supported when importing to a list.

Proceed to the Import page (to import watched films), to the editing page for a list, or to your watchlist. For help importing IMDb files, see our migration guide.

Letterboxd import format

“It’s CSVeasy!” —John Siracusa, ATP 351

The Letterboxd import format is a CSV file (with UTF-8 character encoding) that supports the following column titles, in any order (other column titles are ignored). You must include at least one of the first four column titles listed below on the first line of your file, along with any others your file includes data for.

LetterboxdURI String (optional), matches a film or diary entry by its Letterboxd URI, example: https://boxd.it/29qU

Note: letterboxd.com URIs are also supported for backwards compatibility; this column can alternatively be titled url
tmdbID Number (optional), matches a film by its numeric TMDb ID, example: 860
imdbID String (optional), matches a film by its alphanumeric IMDb ID, example: tt0086567
Title String (optional), matches a film by title when no ID or URI is provided
Year YYYY (optional), used to improve title matching when no ID or URI is provided
Directors String (optional), used to improve title matching when no ID or URI is provided; use commas to delimit multiple director names (and remember to enclose the complete string in quotes)
Rating Number (optional, decimals from 0.5–5 including 0.5 increments), a rating for the film out of five
Rating10 Number (optional, integers from 1–10), a rating for the film out of ten (will be converted to 0.5–5 scale)
WatchedDate YYYY-MM-DD (optional), creates a Diary Entry for the film on this date
Rewatch Boolean (optional), if true, sets the rewatch flag on the Diary Entry when WatchedDate is provided
Tags String (optional), added to Diary Entry when WatchedDate is provided; use commas to delimit multiple tags (and remember to enclose the complete string in quotes)
Review Text/HTML (optional, accepts the same set of HTML tags as on the Letterboxd website), your review of the film, added to Diary Entry when WatchedDate is provided, otherwise added as a review with no specified date*

Note: this column title can also be used when importing to a list, to populate the Notes field.

For example, a valid file might look like this:

Title,Year,Rating
Top Gun,1986,5
Gremlins,1984,4.5
"Paris, Texas",1984,4

Your CSV file must use the comma character (,) to delimit columns—do not include a space character immediately after the comma, as this can interfere with the parsing of quoted strings. Strings containing commas (such as film titles, director/tag lists or review text) must be placed inside quotes, eg: "Joel Coen, Ethan Coen". Don’t forget to escape quotes within quoted text, by prefixing them with a backslash (\) character.

Notes on importing

  • There is no undo after the confirmation step. Be careful!
  • Providing a LetterboxdURI, tmdbID or imdbID for each line in your file performs an exact match for the film (or diary entry, see below), while providing title (and optional year and director/s) results in a best-guess match.
  • The importer shows a summary of the import file prior to completing the import, so you can fix any mismatched titles and/or remove any inappropriate entries (such as TV entries that have matched to similarly named films).
  • All films imported to your Profile will be automatically marked as watched (this step is optional when importing to a list).
  • The importer updates existing Diary Entries if a film is imported with a WatchedDate that matches an existing entry for the same film already in your Diary, to allow the addition of tags or a review to existing entries.
  • Multiple lines containing the same film with the same WatchedDate will be combined into a single entry when the imported data is saved. If these are legitimately separate entries, you’ll need to add them manually.
  • If both Rating columns contain data on any given line of the file, whichever column appears second in the file will take precedence.
  • The importer works best in Chrome, due to its superior JavaScript engine. If you’re having trouble importing large files, try breaking them into multiple parts (ensure that the first “column header” row of the file exists in each part).
  • There is a file size limit of 1MB, so you’ll need to divide large files into multiple smaller files (the header row containing column names must be in every file).

Importing to a list

  • When importing to a list, films in the import file that are not already present in the list will be appended at the end, in the order they appear in the import file. Any films already present in the list will remain in their current positions.
  • If you wish to revise/update a list based on an import, select the option to completely replace the existing list items, which appears on the confirmation screen prior to completing the import.

 

Additional tools

The helper scripts and web apps listed below are created and maintained by third parties. We hope you find them useful, but please contact the individual authors for support.

If you create a helper script that generates files for our importer, let us know.