An 80-question assessment, stuck in a spreadsheet
Lori runs a business course that opens with a self-assessment — around 80 questions covering where a student's business actually stands right now, each one rated for the student's current knowledge and priority. Students revisit the same sheet at the end of the course to see what moved. It had always lived in Excel, which meant a static grid: no views, no way to reorganize by priority, nothing that updated as the course progressed.
She wanted the same assessment inside an xTiles project as a working Collection instead — something students could filter, re-sort, and eventually view as more than a table. The path there is a straightforward CSV import, but three details in Excel decide whether the first attempt works cleanly or comes in scrambled.
Step 1: Clean up the spreadsheet before it ever touches xTiles
Two things need attention in Excel before exporting anything. First, delete any columns beyond your real data range — leftover filter columns, blank buffer columns, anything past the last column you actually use. Select those extra columns and remove them entirely rather than just clearing their contents, since the import reads whatever range Excel reports as having data, empty cells included.
Second, and this is the one that actually determines whether the import looks right on the first try: column order in Excel becomes column order in xTiles. Whatever sits in column A becomes the first property, column B the second, and so on — there is no reordering step during import itself, so it has to be right going in.
The one column xTiles won't let you touch
Every xTiles Collection needs a unique identifying column, and it always becomes the first column — called Name by default. It is created automatically as plain text, and unlike every other column, you cannot delete it or change its property type. If your Excel sheet's first column is not the field you want acting as the unique row identifier, move the right one into column A before you export — trying to fix it after import means working around a locked field instead of a clean layout.
Look at column A. Is it the field that should uniquely identify each row — a question title, a client name, a task label? If not, move it there now. Everything else can be reorganized inside xTiles afterward; this one field is far easier to get right in Excel first.
Step 2: Export to CSV, then import as a Collection
Save as CSV
In Excel, go to File → Save a Copy (or Save As) and choose CSV as the file type. Save it somewhere you can find easily — you will need to browse to it again in the next step.
Open your project settings
Inside the xTiles project you want the assessment in, click the three-dot menu next to the project title and open project settings.
Choose Import
Select the import option and choose CSV as the source type.
Select your file
Browse to the CSV file you just saved and confirm. xTiles creates a new Collection automatically — no manual column setup required to get the data in.
Fix column types
Every imported column starts as plain text. Click a column header to change its property type — Select, Multi-select, Number, and so on — one click per column, matching whatever the data actually is.
If the columns land in a different order than expected, double-check the source file rather than fighting it inside xTiles — a hidden column in the original Excel sheet, still present in the export, is the most common cause.
One current limitation worth knowing before you import
If your spreadsheet has hyperlinked cells — Lori's assessment links each question out to a related worksheet — those links do not currently survive the CSV import; it's a known issue already on the list to fix. For now, treat imported link columns as plain text and expect to re-add the actual links by hand afterward if you need them clickable.
Once it's a Collection, it doesn't have to stay a table
The payoff for going through the import at all: a Collection is not locked to a spreadsheet-style grid. Add a new view and the same data can display as a Kanban board, or any other layout xTiles supports — useful for an assessment specifically, where sorting by priority or status matters more than reading down 80 rows in order.