Overview:
Migrating attachments to Zoho CRM is crucial for maintaining complete customer records and ensuring data continuity, especially when moving from other CRM systems or when migrating data between Zoho CRM accounts. It allows you to link documents, images, and other files directly to specific Contacts, Leads, or other modules within Zoho CRM, providing a comprehensive view of customer interactions and related information.
Attachments can be migrated only via the Data Migration, which is the import option from the setup.
Note:
Record with which the attachment is going to be mapped should also be a migrated one. If not, this attachment migration will not work. Hence, kindly ensure all the records which are going to have attachments migrated to them are migrated as well.
Use case:
Let us consider migrating Attachments in the Leads module. Since we are going to associate the attachments to the Leads records, we will ;
(1) first migrate the Leads records with a migration id
(2) then perform the Attachment migration for the migrated leads.
Importing Leads:
Kindly prepare the Record file with all the respective fields as columns that have to be updated for a Lead record. You can refer the below screenshot of the sample Leads file.
Steps for Importing Leads data:
- Kindly navigate to setup > Data administration > Import.

Click on the respective CRM (Zoho CRM) and then browse all the files as show above.

In Module Mapping >> Map Leads file with the Leads Module in Data Migration Wizard.

Then, comes the Field Mapping where we will map the respective field in CRM with the respective field in the File.

- Once the mapping is done, click the Start migration. If everything is set perfect, all the files will get migrated without any issues.
Importing Attachments associated with the Leads:
In-order to perform migration along with Attachments, two folders are required (Data folder and Attachments folder).
Sample Folder Structure as below :
Data Folder :
Attachment Folder :
Attachment.csv File :
Pre-requisistes:
- Data folder - contains all the data files. For mapping, it should contain the following fields in the Attachments csv file.
- PARENTID- The migration Id of the parent account.
- ATTACHMENTID - The names of your files in the attachments folder.
- FILENAME- How the name should be displayed inside Zoho CRM for those attachments.
- Attachments folder - contains all the attachment source files (without any subfolders). The two folder names should be Data and Attachments. Then compress those two folders and make it as a Zip file.
Steps for Importing the Zip file of Attachments:
Procedure to import the files:
- Kindly navigate to setup > Data administration > Import.
- Click on the respective CRM (Zoho CRM) and then browse all the files.
- The next step is module mapping, map the Attachments file in the Data folder with the Attachments folder.

- Then, comes the field mapping, and please check the screenshot below for the field mapping of attachments file.

- Once the mapping is done, click the start migration. If everything is set perfect, all the files will get migrated without any issues.
Video Example and Sample File :
- You can access the screen recording that outlines the complete process and results in this article here.
- You can access the sample CSV file used in this article here.
Important Points to be noted :
- The attachment files should be in CSV format.
- The Data folder and Attachment folder should be compressed in a single zip file.
Common Errors that might account for this migration:
- Parent Record / ID not found -
This occurs when the record for the parent module is not migrated. For example, in this case, we have leads module records to be associated with the attachments.
If the Leads data was either not migrated or the Ids that we used in the Leads file were not the same as the ones we had stored in the Attachments file, this error would occur.

- Improper File format -
This error occurs when the attachment files are not found during migration.

Custom Solution Created by Sakthi Priya | Zoho Partner Support.