Importing existing collections from another store

[JonoCES]

Hi. I'm trying to import a large inventory from a live store into a development store and cannot get the collections to work at all. There are around 40 collections, all created manually. Most with at least 50+ products in. I've been reading the documentation and have to say that it's very vague and poorly written. It says to import a collection, add a collection column to the csv. But how can adding a collection column to an already exported csv be any use at all? The data I need from the old store is not included in the csv, so adding a column for it isn't going to help me. 

I've been googling this for days but have not been able to find an answer. Is it even possible to include data for manually created collections so that they appear as part of the import on the new store? If so, is anyone able to give me idiot proof instructions for this idiot that fill in the huge gaps in the documentation please?