Importing CSV to Process Diagram is completely broken

I’ve been wrestling with this issue for several hours and am convinced that the problem is with Lucid itself.

I’m trying to build a process diagram from a CSV file (which is the only option for building such diagrams from an internal file). I have been following the instructions and requirements to the letter, even importing Lucid’s own provided sample file, and the results aren’t even close to what the docs say they should be. For instance:

Despite giving all elements the same Page ID (except for the Page element itself), the import creates the elements across several newly-created pages, so they’re not even in the same place.
The process doesn’t put elements into their designated containers.
The process doesn’t create the specified links between elements.

This tool is broken, broken, broken.

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Good morning @icharles,

Thank you for posting about this issue. I am looking into it to see what I can find, and I will come back to update you when I have more information or questions. We appreciate your patience and willingness to let us know what you are experiencing.

Hi @icharles, since this appears to be an account-specific issue, I am directing this to our support team to get you taken care of through a private ticket. The team works through tickets in the order they are received, and you can expect a quick response to your email associated with your Lucid account. Please refer to that email for further correspondence.

i have the same issue. I am even using microsoft co-pilot to do the spec for me and it still spans across multiple pages even though all the page ID values in page ID column is set to 1

Hi @Imraan.Ahmed, thank you for posting in the Lucid Community! I’m sorry you’re encountering the same problem. I’ve gone ahead and directed this to our support team to get you taken care of through a private ticket. The team works through tickets in the order they are received, and you can expect a quick response to your email associated with your Lucid account. Please refer to that email for further correspondence.

I am also having this issue - has there been a resolution or update?

I have not yet received a good response that always works or solves this but some investigation after a number of failed attempts has led me to the following potential areas that may be causing an issue:

(1) Do the rows have to follow a specific order. Which item must be first

(2) Should the name of the document be in the CSV Spec file

(3) Formatting of the “contained by” values. (excel sometimes stores this as a date with extra characters)

(4) Should the various swimlanes be separately captured in the “Text Area” columns or be separate rows

I think Lucid developers should create a better example template with multiple horizontal swimlanes going from left to right and then another example with vertical swimlanes going from top to bottom. This example should include some decision tree points but mostly follow consecutive arrrow steps as this is the most frequent type of process diagram users will need

Hi @jlt1204 @Imraan.Ahmed, thank you for continuing this post. Just wanted to share more information - since Lucidchart’s CSV export uses the same format as its import you may wish to export an existing Lucidchart diagram as a CSV file to use as example of how your file should be formatted. Please take a look at the Import your data section of our Process Diagram Import article for more information on how to do this. If you go to File>Import Data>Process Diagram, you can also download an example CSV data set from that screen.

Please let us know if that does not help with formatting your data, or if you have any questions!

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