After doing an export of my Netflix viewing history, I wanted to import it into Letterboxd. The date format in the Netflix export doesn’t work with Letterboxd, which wants the data as ‘YYYY-MM-DD’ so I wrote up a little python script to do the date conversion because knowing when I watched something is pretty useful.

I had about 1,100 entries in my Netflix history file, Letterboxd identified 432 movies. It did not recognize any of the TV/serial programs (e.g I Think You Should Leave, etc.) Not sure why. May dig into that a bit later.

Here’s how to export the list from Netflix:

You can see the TV shows and movies that have been watched on each profile on your account.

1. From a web browser, go to your Account page.
2. Open the Profile & Parental Controls settings for the profile you want to see.
3. Open Viewing activity.
4. If you see a limited list, use the Show More button.

To download a list into a spreadsheet, select Download all at the bottom of the page. The downloaded file can be opened using any spreadsheet software that supports the CSV file format.

Here’s how to import that data into Letterboxd, but first run the python script below:

import pandas as pd
from datetime import datetime
import sys

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    print("Usage: python script.py input_file.csv")
    sys.exit(1)

input_file = sys.argv[1]
output_file = 'letterbox.csv'

# Read the CSV file
df = pd.read_csv(input_file)

# Assuming the date column is named 'Date'. Change this to your actual column name
date_column = 'Date'
if date_column not in df.columns:
    print(f"The specified date column '{date_column}' does not exist in the input file.")
    sys.exit(1)

# Convert the date format
df[date_column] = pd.to_datetime(df[date_column], format='%m/%d/%y').dt.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

# Write the updated data to a new CSV file
df.to_csv(output_file, index=False)

print(f"Date conversion complete. Output written to {output_file}")