If you’re cleaning up old records or moving inactive patients out of your active list, you can use Cliniko’s data imports to archive (or unarchive) many patients at once.
Archiving patients means they'll be hidden from reports (such as the Patients without upcoming appointments report), and you won't be able to add an appointment for them—however, their details will still remain in Cliniko. Learn more about the differences between archiving and deleting a patient.
In this guide, we'll cover:
How bulk archiving works
Cliniko lets you perform bulk updates to patients, contacts, billable items, and products via data imports. This includes changing your patients’ active or archived status all at once.
To do this, you’ll upload a spreadsheet (in CSV format) on the data imports page. This spreadsheet should list the patients you want to update, along with a column that specifies whether they should be archived.
The process matches what you have in your spreadsheet to the patients on your account. The matching is done using unique identifiers (the Cliniko patient ID). If the identifier in your import file matches one in Cliniko, the record will be updated with your changes.
Getting your data ready
You’ll need a CSV file that includes each patient’s Cliniko patient ID. The easiest way is to start with a patient export from Cliniko, which contains these IDs automatically.
Run a patient export from Cliniko. Head to Settings → Data & docs → Data exports to get this:
Here's more info on exporting patients.
In the resulting spreadsheet, remove any columns you don’t plan on updating so this makes things easier to manage. The only column that must stay is column A - Patient ID. You can also keep first and last names if you like, as this will help you recognise which patients you’re updating. Delete any rows for patients you don’t want to change.
If your patient export included archived records, you’ll see a column called Archived At (column BW).
This contains the date a patient was archived. We recommend removing this column to avoid accidentally matching it to a field during import.
Next, add a new column that you’ll use to control whether patients are archived or unarchived. For clarity, we suggest naming this column Archive patient.
Enter Archive in that column for any patient you want to archive.
Leave the cell blank for any patient you don't want to archive or you want to unarchive.
A blank cell will leave a patient that is active as is.
If the patient was archived, the blank cell will change their status to active.
To avoid accidental changes, include only the patients you intend to change in your CSV.
Save the spreadsheet and make sure it's in the CSV format.
Archiving your patients in bulk via data imports
Now that you've got your spreadsheet ready, you can upload this to Cliniko.
1. Head to Settings → Data & docs → Data imports. Select the patient import type and hit Import:
2. Select your CSV file to upload and click Next - Match information:
3. Select Update existing patients which will update the records you already have rather than create new patient records. Cliniko will automatically detect the Patient ID column. Double-check the correct column is selected:
4. Tick enable next to the Archive patient field. Remember to also select Archived as the import into:
Only tick the fields you actually want to update (e.g. Archived). If you tick other fields, those will be updated too.
5. When you're ready, you can click on Next - Import and finish. Your import will begin immediately. For small spreadsheets, this will only take seconds.
Updating is permanent. There’s no “undo” button. If you delete a data import, this will not affect the updated information. To restore old data, you’d need to upload a new CSV with the previous information.
Once that's completed, head to your patients tab and check some of the patients on the list. Don't forget to tick the show archived patients button to see your archived patients:
Remember, completed updates cannot be undone. Any blank archived fields will make archived patient records active again. If you have any questions at all, reach out to support. We’re happy to help! 😄