I used to also use BibTex for referencing when I worked on Latex but now I find that Biblatex is a better option, its interface is easier and more flexible. Moreover, it has a better language localization than BibTex. I hope this helps you.
First the excel file was converted to a CSV file using LibreOffice Calc.
Then using the web generator https://codebeautify.org/csv-to-sql-converter and entering some database specific details (tablename, columnname identifier, columnname targetvalue) and choosing "CSV to SQL(INSERT)" an SQL script was generated that inserts into each row with the identifier the corresponding value from the CSV file.
The output was saved as an .sql file.
A a database backup created.
Afterwards the sql-file was uploaded into phpMyAdmin as an import script and executed perfectly.
Usually many code editors today are using a git plugin that you can use. Try to find if there is an intergrated Git versioning system in your code editor. Personally would reccoment for Mac using the Visual Studio Code which has git integrated