Roster cleanup guide
The school sent a spreadsheet.
GotPhoto wants a names list.
What GotPhoto's names list actually needs, the eight ways a school's roster spreadsheet breaks it, a manual fix for each, and how List Fixer does the same job in one pass.
Start here
What a names list needs.
GotPhoto's own help centre is specific about this. A names list needs a first name and a last name for every student. Everything else is optional: an identifier (a student ID), a group (the class), a teacher, an expiry date, and a parent's email and phone. The file has to be UTF-8 encoded, on a single sheet, saved as CSV, XLS or XLSX. If you want a parent counted as a buyer contact so they can be reached about ordering, GotPhoto needs an email address on file for them, not only a phone number.
That is a short list. What the school actually sends is rarely that short.
The messy part
The eight ways the school's file breaks it.
1. Title rows, a logo and merged cells above the header
Manual fix: scroll down until you find the real header row, delete everything above it, and un-merge any cells the school's letterhead left behind before you try to import.
List Fixer finds the real header row on its own, past title rows, a logo, merged cells, repeated headers, footers, hidden rows and formulas, across multiple tabs.
2. One row per parent (Emma Smith, twice)
Manual fix: sort by student name, find the pairs, and combine them into one row carrying both parents' contact details before you upload.
List Fixer folds Emma Smith's two rows into one student with a Parent 1 and a Parent 2, matching contacts on the normalized email and phone number so a duplicate typed two different ways still collapses to one. Siblings, who share a last name but are different children, are never merged.
3. Leading zeros gone, and the scientific-notation ID
Manual fix: before you open the file, import the CSV with the ID column set to Text rather than double-clicking it open, or the zeros are gone the moment the spreadsheet touches the cell. A number a spreadsheet already turned into something like 1.23E+08 in a CSV cannot be recovered from that CSV; the same number stored as a number cell in an XLSX file can be recovered exactly.
List Fixer keeps a leading-zero ID byte-identical through both CSV and XLSX, and flags an ID that arrived as scientific notation or as a date as not usable as written, rather than guessing at the original digits.
4. "Smith, Emma" instead of two columns, or SHOUTING NAMES
Manual fix: split a combined "Last, First" column back into two, and fix the capitalization by hand, or with a spreadsheet formula, for every row.
List Fixer splits Smith, Emma into Emma and Smith, turns SHOUTING into Shouting while keeping DeShawn, McRae, van der Berg, O'Connor, hyphens, accents and Jr., offers a name like Mary Kate Johnson both ways for you to decide, and recognizes more than sixty header spellings for the name fields, FName and LName among them.
5. Grades written as Kindergarten, KG, 00, 1st, and the combo class 1/2
Manual fix: pick one grade format and retype every row to match it, watching for a combined class like "1/2" that a quick find-and-replace would turn into grade 12.
List Fixer turns Kindergarten, Kinder and KG into K, and 01, 1st, Grade 1 and First Grade into 1; it keeps a combo grade like 1/2 exactly as written and flags it rather than reading it as grade twelve, and flags anything it cannot read as a grade instead of guessing.
6. Teachers written as SMITH, JENNIFER in one row and Mrs Smith in another
Manual fix: find every version of a teacher's name in the file and retype them to match, one by one.
List Fixer tidies spacing and case, turns Mrs into Mrs. and SMITH, JENNIFER into Jennifer Smith, and flags look-alike teacher names for you without merging them.
7. Two emails in one cell, a phone extension, or "N/A"
Manual fix: split any cell with two email addresses into two contacts, and decide by hand whether a blank or "N/A" phone number means no parent contact exists.
List Fixer reads two emails out of one cell and a phone number with an extension. GotPhoto needs an email address to treat someone as a buyer contact, so a phone-only parent is flagged for you rather than invented.
8. Accents broken by a Windows CSV export (José becomes Jos�)
Manual fix: reopen the original file and re-save it as UTF-8 rather than the spreadsheet's regional default before you touch it again, or the accented letters are already gone.
List Fixer reads UTF-8, Windows-1252 (a spreadsheet's regional default) and UTF-16, so José stays José instead of becoming Jos�.
Judgment calls
What only a human can decide.
Some questions are not List Fixer's to answer on its own: the same student listed under two different teachers, a Sofia spelled Sophia somewhere else in the file, one student ID typed two different ways, or the same name appearing in two different grades. Rows are combined automatically only when they are identical, when they share a valid student ID, or when first name, last name, grade and teacher all match and are all filled in. Anything short of that becomes a card for you to look at, and two people sharing a last name is never treated as evidence on its own, so it never quietly merges siblings.
The whole job
Do it in one pass.
Upload the file the school sent, whatever shape it is in. List Fixer scans the columns and shows you what it found. You look at the handful of rows it could not decide on its own and make the call on each. Then you download.
What comes back: a GotPhoto-ready file in CSV and XLSX with exactly the column set GotPhoto's names list wants, a clipboard copy you can paste straight into a blank Google Sheet, a Needs Review list, a Cleanup Report, a Source Trace back to the original file, and Avery 5160 name labels, one class per sheet.
List Fixer is $39 a year on its own, and included in the ClassPhoto Suite.
Try it on the roster you already have: open the sample mode. It runs on your whole file, on screen; the downloads carry the first ten students, marked SAMPLE, until you enter a key.
FAQ
Names list questions.
Will it merge two different children?
Not on its own. Rows are merged automatically only when they are identical, when they share a valid student ID, or when first name, last name, grade and teacher all match and are all filled in. Anything short of that is handed to you as a review card instead. Sharing a last name is never treated as evidence, so siblings stay separate.
Does the roster get uploaded?
No. The file is read in your browser, the cleanup runs in your browser, and the downloads are written by your browser. The only thing the app sends anywhere is your license key, to check that it is valid.
What about the columns the school should not have sent?
List Fixer's GotPhoto-ready file carries only the columns GotPhoto's names list actually uses: name, identifier, group, teacher, an expiry date, and a parent's email and phone. Whatever else the school's spreadsheet included has no field to land in, so it does not reach that file. Date of birth, home address, medical, lunch status, IEP/504, gender, race/ethnicity, discipline, logins and internal notes are listed as not exported on the mapping screen, and any of them can be switched on deliberately if a school wants one.
Can I use this for PhotoDay or Captura subject data?
List Fixer's output is shaped for GotPhoto's names list specifically. Other platforms call the equivalent file "subject data" and want their own column set. Send us a sample through the contact form and we will tell you honestly whether it fits, rather than guess.
More questions are answered in the main FAQ, or write to us and a real person will answer.