/ /

Manage Documents

Docs Home

/ /

Interact with Your Data

Interact with Your Data

Manage Documents

Insert Documents

Important

Inserting documents is not permitted in MongoDB Compass Readonly Edition.

Compass provides the following view modes to insert documents into your collections:

Shell Syntax Mode: Write or paste documents in the MongoDB shell syntax, which allows unquoted field names and type constructors such as ObjectId() and ISODate(). Use this mode to insert multiple documents at once as an array.
Field-by-Field Editor: Select individual field values and types for each inserted document. This mode only supports inserting one document at a time.
JSON Mode: Write or paste documents in Extended JSON format, which requires quoted field names and represents BSON types as wrappers such as {"$oid": "..."}. Use this mode to insert multiple documents at once as an array.

Procedure

To insert documents into your collection, select the tab corresponding to your chosen view mode:

Open the Add Data drop-down menu.

In the drop-down menu, click Insert Document.

click to enlarge

Alternatively, you can right-click the query bar or its surrounding whitespace and select Insert document... from the drop-down menu.

Open the editor in Shell Syntax mode.

In the Insert Document modal, click the icon to use Shell Syntax mode to insert documents into your collection.

Shell Syntax mode is the default view.

Insert your documents.

In the MongoDB shell syntax, type or paste the document(s) you want to insert into the collection. To insert multiple documents, enter a comma-separated array of documents.

Example

The following example inserts a single document into the collection. Field names are unquoted, and the _id, copies, and lastCheckedOut values use the ObjectId(), NumberInt(), and ISODate() type constructors instead of Extended JSON type wrappers:

{
  _id: ObjectId('507f1f77bcf86cd799439011'),
  title: 'The Odyssey',
  author: 'Homer',
  copies: NumberInt('10'),
  lastCheckedOut: ISODate('2025-03-14T09:30:00Z')
}

Note

If you do not specify an _id value in your document, Compass automatically generates an ObjectId for the _id field.

Click Insert.

Open the Add Data drop-down menu.

In the drop-down menu, click Insert Document.

click to enlarge

Alternatively, you can right-click the query bar or its surrounding whitespace and select Insert document... from the drop-down menu.

Open the editor in Field-by-Field Editor mode.

In the Insert Document modal, click the icon for Field-by-Field Editor mode.

Add new fields.

To add a new field in the document, hover over the row number in the dialog and click the icon to add a new field after the selected row.

You can also add a new field at the end of the document by pressing the tab key when your text cursor is in the value of the last document field.

Note

If you do not specify an _id value in your document, Compass automatically generates an ObjectId for the _id field.

(Optional) Change field type.

You can change the data type of a field by clicking the the data type drop-down selector on the right of the field.

To change the _id field to use a custom value, change the data type from ObjectID to string and then overwrite the _id value.

Click Insert.

Open the Add Data drop-down menu.

In the drop-down menu, click Insert Document.

click to enlarge

Alternatively, you can right-click the query bar or its surrounding whitespace and select Insert document... from the drop-down menu.

Open the editor in JSON mode.

In the Insert Document modal, click the icon for JSON mode.

Insert your documents.

In JSON format, type or paste the document(s) you want to insert into the collection. To insert multiple documents, enter a comma-separated array of JSON documents.

Example

The following array inserts 5 documents into the collection:

[
  { "_id" : 8752, "title" : "Divine Comedy", "author" : "Dante", "copies" : 1 },
  { "_id" : 7000, "title" : "The Odyssey", "author" : "Homer", "copies" : 10 },
  { "_id" : 7020, "title" : "Iliad", "author" : "Homer", "copies" : 10 },
  { "_id" : 8645, "title" : "Eclogues", "author" : "Dante", "copies" : 2 },
  { "_id" : 8751, "title" : "The Banquet", "author" : "Dante", "copies" : 2 }
]

Note

If you do not specify an _id value in your document, Compass automatically generates an ObjectId for the _id field.

Click Insert.

Back

View

Modify Single Document