How to import any pilot logbook: paper, spreadsheet, or app export
Bring a ForeFlight export, a spreadsheet you keep yourself, or a photo of a paper page. Here is how each one gets read, which column names already work, and what you check before anything joins the logbook.
Most logbook importers ask you to bring one of a handful of approved file types. That works until the thing you actually have is a spreadsheet you started keeping in 2014, an export from an app nobody supports anymore, or a phone photo of a paper page. ProvenFlight goes looking for flight rows instead of a filename it recognizes, which covers a lot more ground than a list of supported formats suggests.
Three ways a file gets read
You don't choose between these. The file does.
- A named export. ForeFlight, LogTen Pro, MyFlightbook, and CrewLounge PILOTLOG files have known layouts, so they are read field by field, the same way the military service exports are. When a format already says what a column means, there is nothing to infer.
- Any single-table logbook. With no named layout to match, the file is treated as one row per flight and the columns are matched on their header names. This is the path a homemade spreadsheet takes. It is also why your logbook does not have to come from a product we have heard of.
- A photo, a scan, or a PDF with no text layer. Text recognition runs first. Harder photos and documents get AI-assisted image reading. Anything the file leaves genuinely ambiguous is flagged for you instead of quietly filled in.
Column names the importer already knows
Use any of these headers in your own sheet and the columns land where they belong, with no mapping step. The alternates are interchangeable, and capitalization doesn't matter.
- Date or Flight Date. Required. A row whose date can't be read is skipped and reported back to you, never guessed at.
- Total Flight Time, Total Time, or Total.
- PIC, SIC, Solo, Dual Received, and CFI or Dual Given for instruction you gave.
- Night, X-Country (or Cross Country or XC), IMC or Actual Instrument, and Simulated Instrument or Hood.
- Ground Simulator, Simulator, or FSTD. A row with simulator time and no flight time is recorded as a simulator session rather than a flight.
- Tail Number, Tail, or Aircraft.
- Route. Departure and arrival are pulled from the identifiers inside it.
- Approaches, Landings, FS Day Landings, FS Night Landings, and Hold or Holds.
- Comments or Remarks.
If your headers are named something else
Two values have to be readable for a row to come in: the date, and either flight time or simulator time. Everything else is optional. Headers we don't recognize are ignored rather than mangled, and the file you uploaded stays attached to the flights it produced.
So you have two options, and neither takes long. Rename the header row to match the names above, which beats retyping four hundred rows. Or upload the sheet untouched and read what comes back: review lists every row it skipped and why, which tells you exactly which column it couldn't follow.
Photos of paper pages
- One page per photo or scan, laid flat, no glare across the columns.
- Include the header row, and the page totals line if it has one. Those totals give you something to reconcile against once the rows are extracted.
- Handwriting is the hardest input there is. Expect to fix a few cells, and start with the flagged ones.
- The image stays attached to every flight it produced, so you can hold the row and the page side by side.
Nothing joins the logbook until you approve it
Extracted flights wait in a review queue. Duplicates get flagged before they can land twice, every flight keeps a link back to the document it came from, and you fix whatever the file got wrong while the source is still sitting in front of you. Nothing is committed until you say so.
A civilian logbook is a first-class choice
When you create an account you say what you keep: a civilian logbook, a military logbook, or both. Pick civilian on its own and the conversion machinery never appears. PIC and SIC are the hours you logged, the logbook is one list, and there is no second lens to reconcile against.
Pilots with both keep both. Military hours stay as flown in their service categories, and civilian totals are derived from them when you read them, which is what lets you change a reporting convention later without editing a single flight. Mixed military and civilian time covers how the two kinds of rows coexist, including what happens when the same sortie arrives from two sources.
What comes back out
A paginated PDF ledger you can sign, import files for civilian logbook apps plus CSV, and FAA Form 8710-1 Section III numbers ready to copy into IACRA. See export formats for what each output contains.
Not sure whether the file you have will work? Check the supported records page, or upload it and let the review step tell you what it found.