Title: Importing a CSV
Last modified: May 2, 2017

---

# Importing a CSV

 *  [sunaj10](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sunaj10/)
 * (@sunaj10)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/importing-a-csv/)
 * First of all, this is a fantastic plugin, great work!
    I seem to be having an
   issue uploading CSV’s and I’m not sure where to look now. I have a CSV that was
   about 95,000 records to import. I was getting memory issues, so I broke the CSV
   into much smaller 5000 record files and even upped the memory limit for wordpress
   but now I’m getting an internal server error after a few minutes. The hosting
   support is blaming the plugin for not being very efficient at processing each
   row. Is there anything that I should look at setting-wise for the plugin?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  Plugin Author [Roland Barker](https://wordpress.org/support/users/xnau/)
 * (@xnau)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/importing-a-csv/#post-9090774)
 * It’s true, Participants Database is not very efficient and can run into problems
   with very large uploads because it has to process the data in each field as it
   uploads. The main PHP setting you’ll need to change is the max_execution_time,
   up it to 30 seconds or more and you should be able to upload your CSV in batches.
 *  [IT247365](https://wordpress.org/support/users/it247365/)
 * (@it247365)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/importing-a-csv/#post-9091073)
 * In such a case isn’t it better just to upload the data to the MySql database 
   with a tool like phpMyAdmin?
 *  Plugin Author [Roland Barker](https://wordpress.org/support/users/xnau/)
 * (@xnau)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/importing-a-csv/#post-9091111)
 * Yes, that would be more efficient, but the data will have to be in the correct
   form for the plugin to use. That is why the CSV gets processed when importing.
 * I would suggest you import a CSV of a small sample of your records, then look
   at the resulting data fields to see what kind of conditioning you will need to
   apply before importing the data directly.
 *  Plugin Author [Roland Barker](https://wordpress.org/support/users/xnau/)
 * (@xnau)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/importing-a-csv/#post-9091284)
 * If you need more info, email me at [support@xnau.com](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/importing-a-csv/support@xnau.com?output_format=md)
   for specifics

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘Importing a CSV’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/participants-database/assets/icon-256x256.jpg?rev=1389807)
 * [Participants Database](https://wordpress.org/plugins/participants-database/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/participants-database/#faq)
 * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/participants-database/)
 * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/participants-database/active/)
 * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/participants-database/unresolved/)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/participants-database/reviews/)

 * 4 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [Roland Barker](https://wordpress.org/support/users/xnau/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/importing-a-csv/#post-9091284)
 * Status: not resolved