---
title: "Audience upload settings"
slug: "audience-upload-settings"
tags: ["Totara Platform", "Reference", "Explainer", "Site Administrator"]
updated: 2025-07-22T10:52:18Z
published: 2025-07-22T11:18:12Z
canonical: "totara.help/audience-upload-settings"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://totara.help/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Audience upload settings

## Settings

When [uploading audiences](/19/docs/upload-an-audience) to your Totara site you will be able to configure the following options.

| **Setting** | **Description** | **Notes** |
| --- | --- | --- |
| File | Click **Choose a file..** to browse for the file you wish to upload, or simply drag and drop it into the upload area. | - |
| CSV delimiter | Choose which character you wish to use as a delimiter. By default this is a comma. The delimiter separates items on the same line, like columns in a row. Choose from: - Comma e.g. **,** - Semicolon e.g. **;** - Colon e.g. **:** - Tab e.g. **\t** | - |
| Encoding | Choose the character encoding you wish to use. The default is UTF-8. | - |
| Default context | Set the default context for the audience to either **System** (site-wide) or a specific category on the site. | The default context will be used when no **contextid** (or one of the available fields to look up the **contextid**) is provided. |

## File format

When uploading audiences to your site, the file formatting is very important. You can use either a spreadsheet program or a plain text editor to create the file, but it must be saved as a CSV.

The file will contain a heading row with the various fields you wish to include, and then several rows with the audience data. The delimiter that you choose will act as the column separator when the file is saved as a CSV or opened in a text editor.

## Example

Below is an example of the construction of an audience upload file using a comma as the delimiter:

**name,idnumber,visible** Wellington office,123,1 Brighton office,124,1 Remote workers,125,0

![Course badge](https://cdn.document360.io/a007399b-031e-436b-999a-528240e16f58/Images/Documentation/course-badge_audiences.svg?sv=2026-02-06&spr=https&st=2026-11-06T06%3A55%3A28Z&se=2026-11-06T07%3A55%3A28Z&sr=c&sp=r&sig=Ln%2BP0vS41P4dkaIgbyH7G3lCN8e3Xiu9LjVrxATNQR4%3D)Why not visit the Totara Academy for our latest course on [Audiences](https://totara.community/mod/page/view.php?id=24689) in Totara. Here you can learn more on how to use audiences, see best practice, and give it a go yourself.

Join the [Totara Community](https://totara.community/) for more resources to help you get the most out of Totara.

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