Import a programme from a spreadsheet

If your programme already lives in a spreadsheet, you don’t have to type it in again. Import it into an event: CueStride creates the rooms it names, puts them in the event, and adds a timer for every session, on its day, with its speaker and its length. You see what it will make before it makes anything.

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Import belongs to an event, so create the event first. See Events, the board, and the attendee agenda.

Prepare the sheet

One row per session, and a first row that names the columns. Save or download the sheet as CSV from Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers. A file that uses tabs or semicolons works too.

• Day, required: the date, as 2026-09-21, or day first as 21/09/2026 or 21.09.2026. Month-first dates are not read: 03/04/2026 is 3 April, and 09/21/2026 is refused. A one-digit day or month, such as 3/4/2026, is fine. 2026-09-21 is the safe one.
• Room, required: the room’s name.
• Start, optional: the printed start, as 09:00 or 09:00:30, in the event’s time zone. Leave it empty, or put a dash, for a session the host starts by hand.
• Length, required: minutes (45 or 45 min), hours and minutes (1:30), hours (1.5h), or seconds (90s).
• Title, required: the session’s name.
• Speaker, optional: who leads it.

The columns can have the names your sheet already uses. The first one that matches is read.

• Day: day or date.
• Room: room, stage, track, or hall.
• Start: start, time, start time, or starts.
• Length: length, duration, minutes, or mins.
• Title: title, session, name, or talk.
• Speaker: speaker, speakers, presenter, or who.

For example, a row with the day 2026-09-21, the room Hall A, the start 09:00, the length 30, and the title Doors makes a 30-minute timer called Doors in Hall A, which starts itself at nine. The same row with no start waits for the host. The paste box in the import dialog shows a sample sheet to copy from.

A length runs from one second to 24 hours.

Import it

1. On the Rooms page, choose Settings on the event, then Import programme.
2. Under Spreadsheet file (CSV), choose the file, or paste the sheet under Or paste it here.
3. Choose Preview. It says how many sessions, over how many days, in how many rooms, and lists each room as an existing room or a new room, with the number of sessions it gets. If some sessions should already have started, it says how many, and that they won’t start on their own.
4. If the preview is right, choose Import.

If any row has a mistake, nothing is created. The dialog lists every problem with its line number, such as a day that is not a date, an empty room or title, a length it cannot read, or a start that is not a time. A missing required column is named too. Fix the sheet and preview again.

What it makes

• Rooms. A room is matched by name against the account’s rooms, ignoring capitals and spaces around the name; when several rooms share a name, the newest one wins and an older room of that name is left unused; if the newest already belongs to another event, the import is refused. A name it doesn’t find becomes a new room, in the event’s time zone. Every room in the sheet joins the event, after the rooms it already has.
• Timers. Each row becomes a timer on its day, with its title, speaker, and length. A row with a start becomes a scheduled timer that starts itself at that time. A row without one waits for the host.
• Days. A start is read in the event’s time zone, and the timer’s day is that moment’s date in the room’s own time zone. A new room has the event’s zone, so the days match the sheet. The preview counts and lists the dates written in the sheet, so an existing room in another zone can still file a session under a different day than the preview showed. A day outside the event’s dates is still created, and shows in the room’s controller, but the board and the agenda only have the event’s days, so it never appears there.
• Starts that have passed. A session whose start passed within the last day keeps its printed time, so the board and the agendas show it and how late it runs, but it never starts on its own: it waits for you to start it from the room’s controller. So importing during an event never puts a room live before anyone has its controller open. A start more than a day past is kept as a session, without its printed time.

A room holds a fixed number of timers, five hundred. Rows past that are skipped, the import still succeeds, and the message after it says how many sessions it created, which can be fewer than the preview counted.

An event holds twenty rooms at most. A sheet that would take it past that is refused when you preview it, and nothing is made.

A room that belongs to another event can’t be brought into this one: the import is refused and names the room. Take the room out of the other event first.

After the import

The board and the agenda follow the new sessions at once, for days inside the event. Open each room’s controller to set wrap-up times and messages, and the room’s agenda to check it. See Events, the board, and the attendee agenda.