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Common errors when uploading contacts
Common errors when uploading contacts

How to deal with errors when uploading contacts using .CSV or .TXT files.

Heather Maloney avatar
Written by Heather Maloney
Updated over 4 years ago

When uploading contacts (using .CSV or .TXT files), errors may occur causing some of your contacts not to be added into your Enudge account. Enudge will send you an email report, listing down the contacts which failed to be added, along with the reason for the failure. 

Some common errors

Column Headings

The presence of column headings will cause the first row in your CSV or text file to throw an error stating something like: "The email address is not valid for First Name Surname (Email) - line number 1". If you have received an error on the first row, you don't need to take any action, however, to avoid the error next time, simply remove the column headings row before uploading.

Commas inside a value

A CSV file is a format that separates each item using a comma, so you can’t have commas inside a value (or a cell, if you are using Excel to create your CSV file).

Here is an example of a CSV file created in Excel with commas within a value/cell. Notice the commas within cells B1 and B2. These commas will create an additional column, i.e this csv file will be read as having 5 columns instead of the intended four columns. The email address values will be pushed to the 4th column and consequently the 'email address' field will fail to match with the correct values. 

Below is an example of the error generated by the above CSV file. You will notice that the 'email address' field fails to match with the emails address values and are matched to 'Maintenance' and "Support' instead, resulting in an error.

Line Breaks inside fields

Similar to the presence of a comma inside a field, a line break within a field will cause the rest of the information after the line break to be treated as the start of the next line in your CSV or text file. This will result in unexpected errors with regard to the validation of the email address or mobile number.

Remove all line breaks within cells prior to uploading. In Excel you can use the Find and Replace feature to find line breaks within a column, and replace with a space instead.

Special characters �

Depending on the source of your contact data, non-standard space characters or other special characters, can cause errors in the processing of your contact information because they cause the field validation to fail. An example of this issue is shown in the error below:

In this case, the error is being caused by the special character represented by � at the end of the 2 email addresses. To remove this character, follow these steps: 

  1. If working with a .CSV file, open it in a text editor like NotePad. This is advised because often such special characters are not visible when the file is opened as an Excel spreadsheet. 

  2. Scan through and look for the question mark symbol shown above. In some cases it will appear as a blank space. You might find it faster to use Find and Replace to remove the special characters.

  3. Once removed, save the file as a .TXT file.

  4. Open the .TXT file in Excel. To do so, open a blank Excel worksheet > go to Data tab > select From Text > choose the desired .TXT file > select "Delimited" as the original data type> select "Comma" as the delimiter > select "Text" as the column data format > Finish.

  5. Save the file as a .CSV file and now your file is ready to upload. 

For more information, read the article re: Preparing a CSV File to upload your contacts.

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