Custom Lists: Add Content To Your Guide

The custom list is a fundamental building block of your guide. It is a menu item that houses content for your users. You can add as many custom lists as you need to provide information to your users.

Each custom list will have a name and an icon. Your custom lists can be placed on the main menu itself, or they can live inside a folder if you have a lot of content to keep organized.

Here are some examples of Custom Lists you might include in your guide:

• Speakers or Presenters
• Sponsors
• Exhibitors
• Award Winners
• Staff Members
• Departments on Campus
• Nearby Restaurants or Attractions
• Glossary of Terms
• Presentation Materials or Abstracts

Displaying Custom List Items

Inside a Custom List, you add List Items. Each list item is a page of content. This is a great place for a couple of paragraphs of text.

In the list's Settings tab, you can choose to display your list items in a traditional stacked list view or in a grid view, to show off the thumbnail images. This is great for lists of speakers when you have included headshots of the person, exhibitors to show off their logos or if you want to give a more engaging and visual display of your content.

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Manually Add a List Item

It is quick and easy to add content to your custom lists in Builder. The manual process is great for lists with just a few list items or for handful of edits to existing list items.

This video will show you how to manually add list items and how to edit existing items. It will also show how to rename your list and change the menu item icon.

To add a list item manually, click on the list to open it. Then click the blue New button.

Name (REQUIRED): Enter the name of your list item.

Label/Subtitle (optional): Use this field to provide additional information complementing the name.

Location (optional): To learn all about locations, check out this Support article.

Description (optional): This field is perfect for a couple paragraphs of text.

You can use the formatting tools or the <> HTML editor to modify formatting and input links. Click here for HTML tips.

Image (optional): Include a header image to make your list item pop! You can upload a JPG or PNG file that is 640 pixels wide and 240 pixels tall.

Thumbnail (optional): This is a great place for a logo or a picture of a speaker. You can upload a square JPG or PNG that is 240 pixels tall and 240 pixels wide.

Manually Edit an Existing List Item

To edit an existing list item, just click on the name of the list item. You’ll see those List Item details that you added previously, as well as some tabs for additional tools.

Links: Use this tab to link to other sessions, list items, URLs, or PDFs. For more information on linking, please click here. Also Live Polls linked to a session will appear in this tab.

Feedback: You can link to Surveys via the Feedback tab.

Collaborate: Use this tab to invite people to edit the content of this particular item. Anyone you invite to edit a session via the Collaborate tab does not need a Builder account and will not have access to any other content in your guide! Details on the Collaborate Portal are available here.

Add a Custom List using a Template

With a Custom List template, you can quickly add multiple list items to a list at one time. Download a copy of the list template at the bottom of this article, or download it from your guide in Builder.

Watch this video to learn how to download the template, add list item data to the template, and then upload the template into Builder.

Downloading the List Template

You can download a copy of the list template at the bottom of this article, or you can find it in your guide in Builder. Click on any custom list menu item, and then click Import from file.

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Near the top-right corner of this window, look for Templates. Click either Custom List Items (XLS) or Custom List Items (CSV) to download a template.

You can use Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, Apache OpenOffice, or LibreOffice to open the template files. Please keep in mind that Excel may not handle special characters (like accents) well. Excel cannot encode in UTF-8, which is the preferred text format that Guidebook uses. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are free to download from the links above! 

Adding List Item Data to the List Template

Now that you have a Custom List template, it's time to put your list item information into the spreadsheet. 

If you would like to import images along with your list template, please visit this Support article here. Otherwise, you can use the template to import all of the text, then go back in and manually add your images. 

Uploading a List Template into Builder

After you've added your data to the spreadsheet, you're ready to import the template into Builder.

In your guide in Builder, click on the Custom List menu item you're working on. Then click on the Data import button.

Then, click Start Import on the left side of the screen, under the Import list items heading. 

This will open a file browser; please select the list template you were working on. Then click Import data.

Now What?

You will receive an email that says Success or Whoops! (Make sure to check your Spam folder if you don't receive this email!)

If you see a Whoops! message, please make note of the error message details provided and check out our handy troubleshooting article here. 

FAQs

When I try to open my CSV file, a window pops up asking me to select punctuation, such as "tab", "semicolon"  or "comma". What should I click?
Deselect all options except for comma, and then press OK.

When I convert my Excel file into a CSV file and open it again, there are strange marks in the text (i.e. white question marks on black diamonds). What do I do?
This is probably a side effect of using non-standard characters in your text fields. Many characters that appear when typing in Microsoft Word/Excel, such as the n-dash or curly quotation marks, are proprietary and non-standard.  When transported into a CSV file or a UTF-8 encoded file, they fail to render properly. We recommend uploading this file in .xls format to avoid this encoding issue or by editing using either of these free spreadsheet editors: Libre Office or Apache Open Office.

I have uploaded list items, but now I want to make changes and/or add more list items. How do I do that? 
We recommend exporting your custom list so you have one spreadsheet with all of those list's items in one place. Click here to learn how to export your list spreadsheet. Make changes to your data there and/or add new list items to that spreadsheet, then re-import it into Builder. You'll notice the exported data will have List Item IDs; Builder generates these for you so it can keep track of your list items without duplication or loss of data. 

My list data doesn't fit into these columns. How do I add the list data I want?
If you change the column headers or add your own columns to this spreadsheet, Builder will not be able to read your data. Use the Description field to contain as much information as possible about your list item. Click here for help with concatenation (combining cells to put data in one cell). Click here for help with HTML for things like phone numbers and email addresses. Some information may be best included via linking.