What an export looks like
Most league sites offer the season as a download or a table. Both carry the same columns in some order: a date, a kick-off time, the home team, the away team, and often a venue, a competition and a match number. A CSV file is plain text with the columns split by commas. In much of Europe spreadsheet software splits them by semicolons instead, because the comma is the decimal mark there.
One rule of the format matters for team names: a field that contains a comma, such as a pitch named “Northgate Park, Pitch 2”, is wrapped in double quotes, and a double quote inside a field is written twice. A list opened and saved again in a word processor sometimes turns those straight quotes into curly ones, which breaks the columns. Fixturefold reads curly double quotes as straight ones for that reason.
The four checks
- Find the header row. The first line usually names the columns. Columns that do not belong on a poster, such as a referee or a match number, can stay: they are listed as not used.
- Work out the date order. Look for a date with a day above 12. 25/03/2027 can only be day first; 03/25/2027 can only be month first. ISO dates, written 2027-03-25, are never ambiguous, which is why they are the safest form to export if the site offers it.
- Turn two teams into one opponent. A league list names both sides with the home side first. Your poster needs the other side and an H or an A.
- Check the times. Spreadsheets sometimes add seconds (10:30:00) or show a 12 hour clock (10:30 am). Both are the same kick-off. A missing time should become TBC, not a blank.
A worked example
Four lines of a typical export, as a CSV file:
Date,Time,Home team,Away team,Venue
05/09/2026,10:30,Millbrook Juniors,Hillside Athletic,Millbrook Rec
12/09/2026,10:00,Northgate Colts,Millbrook Juniors,"Northgate Park, Pitch 2"
19/09/2026,TBC,Millbrook Juniors,Eastwood Rangers,Here is how Fixturefold reads each fixture line, before your team name is applied:
| Line | Date | Time | Sides | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 05/09/2026 | 10:30 | Millbrook Juniors v Hillside Athletic | Millbrook Rec |
| 3 | 12/09/2026 | 10:00 | Northgate Colts v Millbrook Juniors | Northgate Park, Pitch 2 |
| 4 | 19/09/2026 | TBC | Millbrook Juniors v Eastwood Rangers | blank |
With the team name typed as Millbrook Juniors, the first line becomes a home game against Hillside Athletic and the second an away game against Northgate Colts at “Northgate Park, Pitch 2”, comma and all. The dates read two ways, 05/09 being 5 September or May 9, so the page asks once how dates are written. The third game keeps TBC, and its blank venue is filled from the home ground if you have set one.
Common mistakes
- Opening the CSV in a spreadsheet set to the other date order, which silently swaps day and month for every date it can.
- Typing the team name differently from the league, such as Millbrook U12 for Millbrook Juniors, so no row matches.
- Deleting the header row, which leaves the columns to be read by what they contain.
- Copying only part of a long table from a web page; count the games against the league's total.
Sources
- RFC 4180: Common Format and MIME Type for Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Files, IETF, October 2005. A field holding a comma or a double quote is wrapped in double quotes, and a double quote inside it is written twice. Last reviewed 19 October 2026.
- Date and Time Formats, W3C Note, 1998. The ISO 8601 profile: a complete date is written YYYY-MM-DD, such as 1997-07-16. Last reviewed 19 October 2026.
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