Salesforce Lead Import CSV: Required Fields, Company and Last Name Errors, and Verifying Emails First

To import leads into Salesforce, your CSV needs a Last Name, a Company and an Email on every row, plus a First Name if you have one. Those are the fields Salesforce Help lists for the lead import, read on 9 November 2026. Before you run it, verify the Email column: once a bad address is a lead, an owner is assigned to it and a sequence may start on it.

Format your lead file →

The required fields

The Salesforce Help page, which covers importing leads and adding them to a campaign, lists these:

Field	Status on the page
Last Name	Required
Company	Required
Email	Required
First Name	Optional, but recommended
Campaign ID	Required when you add leads to a campaign
Campaign Member Status	Required when you add leads to a campaign

The file is a CSV. The page does not state a maximum number of records, so we don't give one here; check Salesforce Help for the limits that apply to your edition.

Why "Company" stops so many imports

A lead export from an event, a scraper or a spreadsheet often has a name and an email and nothing else. Salesforce still wants a company on every row. You have three honest options:

1. Fill it from your data. If the email is on a company domain, you may have the company name elsewhere in your CRM or list.
2. Use a stand-in your team already uses. Some teams use the person's own name for self-employed contacts. Pick one convention and use it every time, so you can find those rows later.
3. Leave the row out and handle it by hand.

What not to do is guess. A wrong company on a lead gets quoted back to the person in the first email.

How to import and match existing leads

The page's steps run from a campaign: on the campaign detail page, choose Manage Members, then Add Members - Import File. Then:

1. Select Leads, then "Add new and update existing records."
2. Set "Match Lead by" to Email.
3. Choose "Assign leads to campaigns" if that's what you want.
4. Select your CSV and click Next.
5. Map your CSV column headers to the fields, then click Next.
6. Review the settings and click Start Import.

Salesforce emails you when the import finishes, and the page says to review the results and fix any errors. Matching by Email means a repeated address updates the same lead instead of creating a second one. That works best when each address appears once in your file, so run the duplicate email remover first.

Build the file

A raw export seldom has the four headers in the shape the wizard wants. The usual fixes:

• One Name column. Split it into First Name and Last Name. The name splitter does this, and the formatter does it for you, dropping titles such as Dr and suffixes such as Jr.
• Mixed-case or spaced emails. Trim and lower-case them.
• Several addresses in one cell. Keep one per row.
• Blank company cells. Decide, as above, before the file reaches the wizard.

The Salesforce lead import file formatter writes First Name, Last Name, Company and Email, merges repeated addresses, and counts the rows it had to leave out for a missing Last Name or Company. If you need a general-purpose column fixer, the CSV import formatter covers that.

Why verify the Email column before the import

Once an address is a lead record, things happen to it automatically:

• Assignment rules give it to an owner, who expects it to be real.
• A sequence or a tool such as Outreach or Salesloft may email it the same day.
• Reports count it, so your lead numbers include people who don't exist.
• Bounces from the first send hurt the sending domain, and a high bounce rate causes trouble with mailbox providers.

Removing a bad lead later is possible, but it is more work than keeping it out. Our posts on verifying emails in Salesforce and sending Salesforce contacts to a sequencer cover the same list after it's inside the CRM. This one is about the point before the import.

What each result means for the import

• Valid: import it.
• Invalid: leave it out of the file. A lead whose only contact method is a dead mailbox is not a lead.
• Risky or unknown: the answer wasn't clear, often because the company domain accepts all mail. Import them, but mark them (a lead source or status value works), and send to them separately and slowly.

A verifier checks the mailbox, not the person. It can't tell you that someone moved on and the company now forwards their mail to a colleague. That is why how often to verify an email list matters even for leads you imported last quarter.

A routine for each import

1. Export or collect the list.
2. De-duplicate by email.
3. Verify at /verify, and keep valid and reviewed risky rows.
4. Format with the lead file formatter, so First Name, Last Name, Company and Email are present.
5. Check the left-out count. If many rows lack a Company, fix the source rather than the file.
6. Import with "Match Lead by" set to Email, and read the results email.
7. Keep the clean file as the record of what you imported and when.

Your org may ask for more

This post covers the fields on the Salesforce Help page. Your organization can add its own required fields and validation rules, and the wizard will refuse rows that break them. If an import fails on a row that looks fine, check those rules with your administrator before you edit the data.

Try it on your own list

Upload a sample at /verify. The first 100 checks are free with a Google sign-in, no card.

Pro, $39 a month: Unlimited email verification.* Never metered, never cut off. See pricing.

*Fair use: the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off.