Manga Vault Help

Importing a collection

You can import your existing manga list from a spreadsheet file. Importing is a PRO feature.

What you can import

  • CSV (.csv) — exported from any spreadsheet, Google Sheets, Numbers, or another tracker.
  • Excel (.xlsx, .xls, .xlsm) — single or multi-sheet workbooks.

Matching is done by ISBN against our catalog. Make sure your file has an ISBN column for the best results.

How to import

  1. Open Settings → Import Collection (in the Data section). The button is gated to PRO subscribers and trial users.
  2. Pick your file. If it’s an Excel workbook with multiple sheets, you’ll be asked which sheet to read.
  3. Map your columns. Manga Vault auto-detects the ISBN column by name and by how many values look like real ISBNs. You can map optional columns alongside ISBN:
    • Title, Series, Author, Notes, Condition.
    • A live preview shows the first three rows so you can sanity-check your mapping before continuing.
  4. Review the preview. Your rows are sorted into three buckets:
    • Matched — the ISBN is in our catalog. These will be added to your library.
    • Sent to our team — the ISBN is valid but not in our catalog yet. We submit those to the request queue automatically. When we add the title, it’s added to your collection and you get an email.
    • Unreadable — anything we couldn’t make sense of (missing ISBN, scientific notation, ASIN codes, blank cells). These are listed so you can clean them up in your source file and re-run if you want.
  5. Confirm. Matched volumes land in your Owned library marked Unread.

A few things to know

  • PRO required. Import is gated to PRO and trial users. Free-plan users will see an upgrade prompt.
  • ISBN-only matching. We don’t fuzzy-match by title — too risky. If your file has only titles, every row lands in “unreadable.” Add an ISBN column and re-import.
  • Excel preserves long ISBNs. A spreadsheet saved as .xlsx keeps 13-digit ISBNs intact. CSV exports from some apps mangle them into scientific notation like 9.78014E+12; Manga Vault treats those as unreadable rather than guess the missing digits. If you can, export as Excel.
  • Big files are fine. Up to 20,000 rows per import. The matching itself runs in our cloud — your phone doesn’t have to crunch the data.
  • Resumable. If your connection drops mid-import, just re-open the import screen — we’ll prompt you to resume the same file from where it left off.

If something looks off

  • “0 matched” — usually the ISBN column wasn’t auto-detected. Go back and pick the right column on the mapping screen.
  • “This is taking a while” — large imports take 30–60 seconds. We’re processing your ISBNs in batches of 100 against the catalog.
  • A specific row was skipped — check the “unreadable” list. The most common cause is a partial ISBN, an ASIN (Amazon’s internal code, not a real ISBN), or a Goodreads-style title-only row.

What’s next

We’re tracking MyAnimeList XML import and Google Sheets as planned next sources. If you have a tracker you’d like supported, tell us at support@mangavault.app — the more requests we see, the higher it climbs the roadmap.

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