Add hardware: Import from CSV file - CSV file format and requirements

The CSV file must have a header line (determining what each value on the following lines is about), and the following lines must each contain information about one hardware device only. For each hardware device, the following information is required:

HardwareAddress	The IP address of the hardware device.
HardwareUsername	The user name for hardware device's administrator account.
HardwarePassword	The password for hardware device's administrator account.
HardwareDriverID	If cameras and server are offline: specify a HardwareDriverID for each hardware device you want to add. Example: ACTi ACD-2100 105 indicates that you should use 105 as the ID if adding an ACTi ACD-2100 hardware device.

Existing configuration parameters that are not specified in CSV file remain unchanged. If a parameter value for an individual camera in the CSV file is empty, the existing parameter value remains unchanged on that camera.

You can store hardware device information in spreadsheets as found in, for example, Microsoft Excel to save the information as comma-separated values in a CSV file.

The following applies for the information present in CSV files:

The first line of the CSV file must contain the headers, and following lines must contain information about one hardware device each
Separators can be commas, semicolons or tabs, but you cannot mix them
All lines must contain valid values. All camera names, user names and similar items must be unique, and cannot contain any of the following special characters: < > & ' " \ / : * ? | [ ]
There is no fixed order of values, and you can omit optional parameters entirely
Boolean fields are considered true unless set to 0, false or no
Lines containing only separators are ignored
Empty lines are ignored.

Even though the CSV file format is generally ASCII only, Unicode identifiers are allowed. Even without Unicode identifiers, the entire file or even individual characters can be Unicode strings.