Questions · Addresses
How do I verify and correct the addresses in an Excel file?
You upload the file as it is, Excel or CSV, and download it again with an extra column for every field that was fixed and a column with the outcome: correct, modified, to be checked. Nothing to prepare: we recognise the headers ourselves, whether the columns are called “Street”, “Customer address” or “City”. Addresses in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain and the other countries whose register is in service are verified down to the house number; every other country comes back in its postal form.
What happens to each row
Every address goes through the RadarAddress engine, built for real contact lists: mailing campaigns, donors, customers. The engine reads street, house number, postcode and city together, not one field at a time, and rebuilds the address in the correct delivery form for its country.
- The street is written in full and in the register's spelling: “kalverstr 92” becomes “Kalverstraat 92”.
- The postcode is checked against the address register: a wrong or missing “1012LG” becomes “1012 LG”, and where the register is in service it is confirmed for that very house number.
- The city is put in its official form and in capitals, as the post wants it.
- What does not belong to the street — “c/o”, floor, flat — is moved to the right field instead of dirtying the address.
The outcome beside every address
In the file you download every row has a readable outcome and a reason. Correct addresses stay as they were. Modified ones show what changed, field by field. The ones that cannot be rebuilt with certainty — a street not found in the municipality, a missing house number — stay flagged with the reason: you look at those yourself, and they are usually few.
A correction is always declared, never silent. If the engine is not sure it says so: it would rather leave you a doubt than invent a plausible address.
How long it takes
A file of a few thousand rows is ready in minutes; large jobs run in a queue and you get an email when the file is ready. The job stays downloadable for thirty days.
Before starting you see a preview with the recognised columns and what the job will use; credits are taken only when you confirm. The price list is on the pricing page.
How to prepare the file
Excel (.xlsx), LibreOffice and CSV with any separator are fine. You need a header row and a column for the address; postcode, city and country can be in separate columns or all in the same cell: the engine splits them. A country column, or one country for the whole file, tells the engine which register to use. The other columns stay intact and come back in their original order. Details in how to prepare the file.
A typical row
1012 LG AMSTERDAM
Outcome: modified. Postcode in the Dutch form, city in capitals, house number verified in the national register. All declared in the file, field by field.
The questions that follow
Do I have to rename the columns of my file?
No. We recognise the headers in the forms people write them: “Street”, “Address”, “City”, “Postcode”, “Zip”, “Country”. In the preview you see which columns we recognised and with what role, and you can correct it before starting.
What happens to the columns that have nothing to do with the address?
They stay intact and come back in the result file in their original order. The new columns, with the fixed fields and the outcome, are added at the end.
Are correct addresses touched?
No. An address that is already correct stays as it is and gets the outcome “correct”. The engine only intervenes where there is something to fix, and it writes it down.
What if an address cannot be corrected?
It stays in the file with the outcome that explains why: street not found in the municipality, insufficient data, house number missing. Those are the cases to look at by hand, and they are usually a small part of the file.
Which countries are verified down to the house number?
The ones whose national address register is in service: the up-to-date list is on the countries page. For every other country the address comes back in its postal form, with the outcome saying that the street was not verified.
Do my data stay confidential?
The file is used only to process the job, stays downloadable for thirty days and is then deleted. No data is used for anything else.
Upload your file
Register for free, upload the Excel or CSV file and look at the preview: credits are taken only when you confirm.
Upload your fileRead also: Verify one address at a time · How to prepare the file · Why mail comes back