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Bulk Commands

You can use a CSV file to execute commands in bulk. Each row of the spreadsheet is treated as an individual API call. To execute a bulk command, use the option --bulk-file-path=<PATH_TO_CSV>, where <PATH_TO_CSV> is the local path of a CSV file containing the necessary information. For example, you can create folders using the command box folders:create --bulk-file-path=path/to/file.csv
Drag the CSV file from your finder window/file explorer to the terminal/command line window to auto-populate the path.
To specify the column names for your CSV file, go to the GitHub repository and look at the argument names, or use the --help option. In this case, these are PARENTID and NAME and are case insensitive. You can also use a CSV template for this example bulk create folders command. Executing the command below creates three folders at the root level, 0, of the Service Account’s folder tree.

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Set up and use bulk commands

  1. Clone the boxcli GitHub repository or download the files from Bulk actions directory.
  2. Adjust the .csv template to your needs. For example, if you want to create several folders, you can use the folders-create.csv template as your starting point.
  3. Run the command.

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Bulk Commands with Options

Any option included in the command is applied to every row in the CSV file. For example, box folders:collaborations:create --bulk-file-path=path/to/file.csv --role=editor will create collaborations for each user in the csv as an editor. However, you can also use options in the CSV file. Building on the last example, instead of using the --role=editor option in the command itself, it can be a column called role. The command becomes: box folders:collaborations:create --bulk-file-path=pathtocsv

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CSV templates

Predefined CSV templates help you to structure the data you want to manage in bulk. Templates reside in the Bulk actions directory, grouped into folders. The table below lists the currently available templates.
Last modified on March 17, 2026