There are some common problems that can happen when uploading a bulk SKU mapping file.
This article will show you how to identify those problems and fix them. We notice that if you are coming from an application other than Microsoft Excel (like Google Sheets, Libre Office Calc, etc.) that certain problems can happen that need to be fixed before uploading your file.
To help troubleshoot, open the CSV file with notepad (or similar application that can view .TXT files) on your computer. This will show you some things that you cannot normally see in Excel.
I'm getting an error about an unclosed quote:
This happens when a quotation mark is used without another close " .
How to fix:
- Behind the scenes, it is declaring the data as a text label and the Spark Shipping parser doesn't know what to do with it
- Open your notepad or app that views TXT files
- Search for quotes " ; your search will show you these records; also search for single quote '
- Make a note of these SKUs and close the file
- Now open the file backup in Excel as a CSV file
- Go to the offending records and delete those lines; re-paste the SKUs in a new line and save
Why did this happen in the first place?
Excel is just the best in the business when it comes to dealing with CSV files. This normally happens when originally, data is copied from Google Sheets (or other app) into Excel and these values get set as a label.
I uploaded the file and it seems like it did not run, no error:
- The most common problem that causes this is a space that was inserted before the start of the SKU or even a space after the SKU.
- We have also seen this happen in cases where the file was not saved as a UTF-8 CSV file
How to fix:
- Open the CSV file in Excel
- Click on a SKU in the cell editor and make sure the SKU is the first character and no space is before the start of this first character
- Do the same with the last character of the SKU
- Open up the "Find and Replace" search box and click on the "Replace" tab (Windows: CTRL+F)
- In "Find what:" enter one space with the spacebar
- Do not enter any value in the "Replace with:" field; you are basically saying find a space and replace with nothing
- Now click the "Find All" button; this will find all of the stray spaces and will fix them
- Save the file (as UTF-8 CSV) and try uploading to Spark Shipping again
Why did this happen in the first place?
CSV files being transported between multiple systems, especially those that Excel is not used in, can cause this. We have also seen this happen in data files that are coming from .XLXS and then being saved to .CSV
For the article on how to do Bulk SKU Mapping click here:
If you are getting an error after running a large SKU file, see this article:
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