Excel tries to help... but sometimes it takes away the + from your country code in your phone numbers or the 0 where you are not using a country code. 

Note once you have taken the steps below and save, you can upload to Movement with the correct formatting. Often the formatting will revert and execel will 


  1. Next to your phone number column add a new column to add the country code, make both the phone number column and new column text format
  2. In the top cell of the new column enter formula ="+[country code]"&[cell with phone number]. This should populate the column with the phone number plus the country code 
    So in this example you would add ="+44"&B2

  3. Select the cell with the correct phone number in it, then grab the plus sign in the bottom right and drag it down to the bottom of your column. This should fill out the whole column with the correct numbers.
  1. Finally, create a column beside it called “Phone number” — you want the phone numbers in here, in text format. Copy the column with the correct phone numbers and paste as a value in the new column. 
    You may get a little pop up warning saying “number stored as text” — that’s fine, you want that because it means you get to keep the + at the start.


  2. You can now safely delete the two original columns, save the updated version and upload the CSV to Movement. 
    Opening up the CSV with excel again may revert these changes and excel may remove the +. Therefore it's recommended to not re-open once you have saved the file in the correct formatting.