How to make a table
To build something of your own you need a spreadsheet app, for example Numbers, Excel or Google Sheets. There are only two required fields, title and startYear. All other fields are optional and would make your collection more detailed, if you want that.
Your table could look roughly like this at the start:
| title | startYear | endYear | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gaius Julius Caesar | -100 | -44 | Roman general and statesman whose career brought the Republic to an end. |
| Cologne Cathedral | 1248 | 1880 | High Gothic cathedral that took more than six centuries to finish. |
| Moon landing | 1969 | Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon. |
Saved as a CSV, the same table looks like this. A CSV is nothing more than the file version of your table, so you never have to type the semicolons yourself.
title;startYear;endYear;description Gaius Julius Caesar;-100;-44;Roman general and statesman whose career brought the Republic to an end. Cologne Cathedral;1248;1880;High Gothic cathedral that took more than six centuries to finish. Moon landing;1969;;Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon.
Years before the common era are written negative, so -106 stands for 106 BC.
Your table is ready. If you want to bring it over to the app without a file, just copy it and paste it into the „From copied text“ field. If you would rather have a CSV file, save it as one now.
You will find the export in Numbers under Share → Export → CSV, in Excel under Save As, and in Google Sheets under File → Download → CSV.
How the file then gets onto your iPhone, and how it continues in the app, is explained a little further down.
Tip: how to get a quick draft
You already have a topic but do not want to type every entry by hand? Give an AI like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini your topic and let it produce the table. Copy the prompt below and replace the word „TOPIC“ with your own subject.
What you get back is a first draft. It is good enough to build a first collection as a CSV file within minutes and to see how easily a timeline of your own can be built and imported. It is a quick way to see what you can do with your own timeline.
Show the prompt and copy it
Make me a CSV file for the Parallel timeline app about TOPIC. Format: - Semicolon ( ; ) separated. UTF-8. - Use exactly this header, in this order: title;startYear;startMonth;startDay;endYear;endMonth;endDay;isAlive;type;category;description;colorHex;tags;startFuzziness;endFuzziness;websiteURLs - Every row must have all 16 fields, so 15 semicolons. Fill what you know and leave the rest empty, but keep the semicolons in place. Field rules: - title: short and clear, no semicolons. - startYear / endYear: whole numbers. Negative for years BC, for example -753. Leave endYear empty for a single event or a living person. - startMonth, startDay, endMonth, endDay: numbers, only if known. - isAlive: true for a living person, otherwise leave it empty. - type: one of person, event, epoch, dynasty, conflict, place, movement, work. - category: one of these words: Art, Science, Politics, Religion, Economy, Technology, Philosophy, Literature, Music, Military. - description: two or three factual sentences. No semicolons. Wrap it in straight quotes. - colorHex: a hex color like #E74C3C, consistent per category. - tags: a few lowercase comma separated tags, no spaces. - startFuzziness / endFuzziness: uncertainty in years as a number like 10, or high, medium or low. Leave it empty if the date is firm. - websiteURLs: a Wikipedia link where possible. Give me 12 to 25 well chosen entries. Check the dates carefully. Output only the CSV, nothing else.
If the AI does not hand you a CSV file, you can simply copy the text and paste it into Parallel under Collections → „From copied text“. That is the route without a file. If you do get a CSV file, or prefer one, that works just as well.
What to watch out for with AI tools
AI tools give you fast and impressive first results, but they also make plenty of mistakes, and those are often not obvious at a glance. Those are usually minor problems. More importantly, AI can get dates and facts wrong. So treat the result as a draft and check it against reliable sources, for example Wikipedia. A draft in a few minutes is a valuable start, but it stays a draft.
The collections that come with Parallel are made differently. Every entry is researched in depth, checked against independent sources, revised and read again more than once.
How to import your table into Parallel
There are two routes for your own data and both end in the same place. Pick whichever suits you. And if you have no table at all: in the app you can add every entry by hand. Choose „Create your own“, create the collection first, then add the entries one by one with the plus sign on the timeline screen.
How does the file get onto your iPhone?
Before you can import a CSV file it has to be saved on your iPhone. There are several ways to do that:
- iCloud Drive: put the file into iCloud Drive on your Mac or PC and it is ready on the iPhone right away.
- AirDrop: send it from your Mac to the iPhone and choose to save it into the Files app.
- Email or message: send it to yourself and tap Save on the attachment.
- Download: if you download it in the browser on the iPhone it lands in Downloads.
In every case it then sits in the Files app, usually under Downloads or iCloud Drive. That is exactly the place you pick when importing.
With a CSV file
When your table is already on the device as a CSV.
- Open Parallel and go to Collections → „Your own collection“ → „From a file“. The file picker opens right away.
- Pick your CSV, usually in the Files app under Downloads or iCloud Drive.
- The preview sheet shows at the top how many entries were recognised. Decide whether a new collection is created or whether the entries join an existing one.
- Give your collection a name and, if you like, a color. Leave the field empty and the collection is called „Imported collection“.
- Tap Import at the top right. It shows up in the Timeline tab immediately.
Without a file
When your table sits in a spreadsheet app, on a web page or in a chat.
- Copy your table. That can be cells from Numbers or Excel, a table from a web page or the answer from a chat.
- In the app go to Collections → „Your own collection“ → „From copied text“, paste the text and tap Next.
- The preview sheet shows how many entries were recognised. Choose a new or an existing collection.
- Give it a name and, if you like, a color.
- Tap Import at the top right.
Parallel recognises semicolon, comma and tab on its own. Copying from a spreadsheet app usually produces tabs, and that works too. The header row is optional. If you leave it out, Parallel maps the columns in the standard order, starting with title and startYear.
A free sample collection to try it out
If you first want to see how quickly the import works, You can also try a free sample collection. Either download the CSV file here and import it as described above. Or go to Collections → Your own collection → Load sample in the app, then you need no file at all.
Example: Ancient Rome
20 entries, from the founding of the Republic to the fall. Emperors, thinkers and generals as bars across roughly a thousand years. A CSV is simply a table that becomes your timeline.
Download the sample collection (.csv)
Every column explained
Here I explain all sixteen columns you can use in the app.
Only title and startYear have to be filled in. Add the others when you have the information, or simply leave them out. Empty cells are perfectly fine.
All 16 columns
| Column | Needed | What to put |
|---|---|---|
| title | required | The name of the person, event or period. |
| startYear | required | A whole number, negative for years before the common era. |
| startMonth | optional | 1 to 12. Leave empty if unknown. |
| startDay | optional | 1 to 31. Leave empty if unknown. |
| endYear | optional | Leave empty for a single moment or an ongoing entry. |
| endMonth | optional | 1 to 12. |
| endDay | optional | 1 to 31. |
| isAlive | optional | true for a living person, otherwise leave it empty. |
| type | optional | One of eight: person, event, epoch, dynasty, conflict, place, movement, work. If left empty, the row counts as an event. |
| category | optional | Any word works. Use the same names as the built-in collections and your entries show up alongside them when you filter. |
| description | optional | A sentence or two. Wrap it in quotes if it contains commas. |
| colorHex | optional | A color like #E74C3C. Skip it and Parallel colors by type. |
| tags | optional | Comma separated, anything you like. Tags power the filters. |
| startFuzziness | optional | Uncertainty in years, a number like 10, or high, medium or low. Leave it empty if the date is firm. |
| endFuzziness | optional | Same idea, for the end date. |
| websiteURLs | optional | One or more links, separated by a vertical bar |. |
- Fuzziness draws the uncertainty. If a birth year is only known to within about ten years, write
10and Parallel softens the edge of the bar accordingly.
Template with all sixteen columns, plus tips
The template is right here to copy. It has all sixteen columns and two rows that show two different cases:
- Cicero, birth and death known to the exact day.
- Homer, whose dates are uncertain, hence „plus or minus 50 years“.
If you would rather start in Numbers or Excel right away, the very same content is available as a file: Download the template as CSV.
title;startYear;startMonth;startDay;endYear;endMonth;endDay;isAlive;type;category;description;colorHex;tags;startFuzziness;endFuzziness;websiteURLs Cicero;-106;1;3;-43;12;7;false;person;Politics;"Roman statesman and orator of the late Republic.";#FF9F0A;europa,italien,politik,antike;0;0;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero Homer;-800;;;-700;;;false;person;Literature;"Greek poet whose dates are uncertain.";#BF5AF2;europa,griechenland,literatur,antike;50;50;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer
For an entry like Homer, Parallel draws the edges of the bar softly instead of pretending to a precision that does not exist.
A tip that pays off later: use the same words for tags and categories that the built-in collections use, so for example italien instead of rome and Politics instead of Statesman. You are free to invent your own tags, the app takes any word. The one thing worth knowing: your own entries only line up with the built-in ones when you filter by a place or a topic if they share the same vocabulary.
That goes for tags and for categories: on import Parallel accepts any word. If you create an entry directly in the app, the field offers you the existing categories to choose from.
In short
With a CSV file: save the table as CSV → get it onto the iPhone → open the Parallel app → Collections → Your own collection → From a file → pick the file → Import → Done
Without a file: copy the table → open the Parallel app → Collections → Your own collection → From copied text → paste the text → Next → Import → Done
Parallel is a timeline app for iPhone.
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