Import a past trip into Polarsteps from a spreadsheet

1. On polarsteps.com, click the red "Add a trip" button on your profile, enter a Trip name and pick a start date in the past.
2. Choose who can see the trip before saving, because the default for every Polarsteps trip is Followers.
3. Add the first place as a step with the smaller + sign on the timeline; on the desktop website you can also enter its latitude and longitude by hand.
4. Open the step, click "Edit step", set the date and time, write the story and add photos from your computer files.
5. Repeat for every row of the spreadsheet. A wrong date on one step makes the route line connect the wrong places.

I did Vietnam in 2019, before I had Polarsteps. Create the trip as private and import the 12 places in vietnam.csv as steps, with the photo links from the last column.

1. 01

   Check the rows first

   The agent reads the file and needs a place and a date on every row. Rows without a date, or with a place that could be two towns, go back to you as a short list before anything is created.

2. 02

   Avoid a second copy

   It calls list_trips and looks for a trip with the same name or overlapping dates. If one exists, it asks whether to add the missing steps to it instead of creating a new trip.

3. 03

   Create the trip privately

   create_trip gets the name, the first and last date from the file and privacy only_me, unless you named another level. You can share it once the route looks right.

4. 04

   Import with time zones

   Dates get the local time zone of each place, so a night bus across a border keeps the right order. Files longer than 50 rows go in several import_steps calls, each one confirmed by you.

5. 05

   Add single steps later

   For one new place, such as today in Lisbon from your notes, the agent uses add_step on the current trip and leaves the rest of the route as it is.

Trip created: Vietnam 2019 (2 Mar to 20 Mar 2019), privacy Only me
Steps imported: 12 of 12, in date order
Photos attached: 31 from the links in column F
Asked you about: "Hoi An" vs "Hoi An Ancient Town" (row 7), kept the first
Next: set privacy to Followers when you are happy with the route

• Polarsteps cannot import a GPX or other location file; steps by coordinates are possible only on the desktop website, entered by hand.
• Every new Polarsteps trip defaults to Followers, and an accepted follower sees all your trips except the ones set to Only me.
• The Polarsteps website accepts photos only from your computer files; the iPhone and Android apps can also pull from iCloud, Google Photos or Dropbox albums.
• Polarsteps never adds photos to steps on its own, and a planned future trip cannot hold photos at all.
• Changing the date or place of a Polarsteps step redraws the route line, so the help center asks you to check the other value too.

create_trip, import_steps and add_step ask for your OK by default. To run it on a schedule without you, switch confirmation off for those tools in your dashboard.

Sources: Polarsteps Help: Can I import a GPX or other location-file into Polarsteps? · Polarsteps Help: How do I create my first trip? · Polarsteps Help: Can I import my photos? (e.g. iCloud, Google Photos) · Polarsteps Help: What are steps and how do I add or edit them?

curl https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/polarsteps/import_steps \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"trip_id":"20931176","steps":[{"place":"Hanoi, Vietnam","date":"2019-03-02T09:00:00+07:00","title":"Arrival in Hanoi"},{"place":"Ha Long Bay, Vietnam","date":"2019-03-05T08:00:00+07:00","title":"Boat to Ha Long Bay"}]}'

{
  "trip_id": "20931176",
  "added": 2,
  "steps": [
    {
      "step_id": "301440018",
      "title": "Arrival in Hanoi",
      "date": "2019-03-02T09:00:00+07:00"
    },
    {
      "step_id": "301440019",
      "title": "Boat to Ha Long Bay",
      "date": "2019-03-05T08:00:00+07:00"
    }
  ]
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the tool is polarsteps_import_steps. Example data.

• Export a single Polarsteps trip as GPX or Markdown
• Turn a Polarsteps trip into a blog post
• Proofread a Polarsteps trip before printing a Travel Book
• Polarsteps API and MCP server: every tool
• All use cases