Bring your days with you

If you already keep your days somewhere, you don't have to type them again. Sojournal reads a CSV file: from a spreadsheet, from another day-tracker app, or from your own notes. CSV import is free, and so is CSV export, so your record never gets stuck in Sojournal either.

Where to find it: More → Import from a spreadsheet.

What the file needs

Two things: a date and a place. Either one row per day:

date,country
2026-01-03,US-FL
2026-01-04,US-FL
2026-01-05,Canada

or one row per stay, with a start and an end date:

from,to,place,note
2025-11-03,2026-04-10,Florida,Winter in Naples
2026-05-12,2026-05-30,France,
2026-06-01,2026-06-14,Portugal,Lisbon and Porto

That's it. A notes column is optional.

Column names. The first row can name the columns, and Sojournal recognises the usual words in English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Turkish: date, day, from, to, start, end, arrival, departure, country, state, place, note, and Datum, von, bis, Land, Ort, date, pays, lieu, fecha, desde, hasta, país, datum, van, tot, plaats, data, dal, al, paese, tarih, ülke, giriş, çıkış and so on. If there's no header row, it looks at what's in the columns instead.

Dates. These all work:

• 2026-06-14 (also with / or .), and date-times like 2026-06-14T10:00:00Z (the date is taken as written)
• 14.06.2026 (always read as day first)
• 14/06/2026 or 06/14/2026 (also with -)

If a file has dates that could be read both ways, like 03/04/2026, and nothing else in the file settles it, Sojournal asks you once how your dates are written. Two-digit years (14/06/26) aren't read; change the column to four-digit years first.

Places. Any of these:

• country codes: FR, DE, US
• state and province codes: US-NY, US-FL, CA-ON
• plain US state codes in a column of states: FL, NY, AZ
• names in any of the seven app languages: France, Deutschland, New York, Türkiye
• common short forms: USA, UK, England, Holland

A value Sojournal can't match for sure is never guessed. It shows up under Places in the file; tap it and pick the place, and the choice applies to every row with that value.

File details. Comma, semicolon and tab separators are detected on their own. UTF-8, Excel's "Unicode text" and older Windows files all open.

What happens on import

• You see the result before anything is saved: new days, days you already have, rows without a place yet, and rows with a date that can't be read.
• Days you already recorded are never changed. Only empty days are filled.
• Days after today are left out. Add future trips as plans instead.
• Each imported day says in its history that it came from a file, so it never passes for a day you logged at the time.
• A stay row can cover up to ten years, so a typo in a year can't flood your record.
• A CSV exported from Sojournal comes back exactly as it was, including where you slept and the day flags.

Two places on one day

Put two rows with the same date, one per place. A flight day from Toronto to Florida becomes one day with both places.

Things to check after importing

• Travel days and nights. Files from other sources don't say where you were at midnight or whether a day was transit or medical. If you follow the UK Statutory Residence Test (which counts midnights), open your travel days and set where you slept. Do the same for any transit or medical days that matter for your rule.
• Gaps. The record health card on Today lists the days that are still Not recorded. Sojournal never fills them with a guess.
• The count. Tap any number to see the day-by-day breakdown, and compare it with your old total. If they differ, the breakdown shows which days and why.

Coming from…

A spreadsheet. Keep a date column (or from and to) and a place column, then save or export as CSV: File → Save As → CSV in Excel or Numbers, File → Download → CSV in Google Sheets. Extra columns don't hurt.

Another day-tracker app that exports CSV. Export from that app, open the file in a spreadsheet to check it has a date column and a place column, and import it. If it has many other columns and the import picks the wrong one, delete the extra columns and save again.

An app that only exports PDF, or nothing. Make a short spreadsheet with one row per trip (from, to, place) and import that. A year of trips is usually 10 to 20 rows. Or skip the file: in Sojournal a whole stay is two taps (pick the range, pick the place).

Paper, passport stamps, or the EES. Same as above: one row per stay. For Schengen, the official Entry/Exit System record is what the border guard sees, so check your rows against it if you can.

Google Maps Timeline. Not yet. Timeline export import is planned for version 1.1.

A photo library. Sojournal Pro can suggest days from photos you pick: when and where each was taken, read on your phone, camera photos only, nothing saved until you confirm. On Android the system photo picker may remove the location from photos; then Sojournal groups the photos by date and asks you for the place.

Leaving again

More → Export CSV writes every day with its place, where you slept, flags, source, when it was entered and edited, the note and how many evidence files it has. It's free and stays free. More → Back up to a file saves everything, evidence included if you add the zip.

Checked against the app on 22 October 2026. Sojournal counts days; it is not tax or legal advice.