How to Fix CSV Import Errors

CSV import failures can be frustrating — especially when the file looks perfectly fine in Excel. The root cause is almost always one of a handful of well-known issues: wrong encoding, mismatched delimiters, inconsistent column counts, or problematic line endings. This guide walks through each one and shows you how to fix it.

The Most Common CSV Import Errors

Most import failures come down to structural problems that spreadsheet applications silently correct but databases and APIs reject. The key categories are: character encoding mismatches, wrong field delimiter, rows with inconsistent column counts, and Windows vs Unix line endings. Identifying which category your error falls into is the first step to fixing it.

Encoding Issues (UTF-8 vs Latin-1)

The most common encoding problem is a file saved in Latin-1 or Windows-1252 being imported as UTF-8. This causes accented characters (é, ü, ñ) and currency symbols (€, £) to appear as garbled text or question marks. To fix this: open the file in a text editor that shows encoding (like Notepad++ or VS Code), check the encoding in the status bar, and re-save as UTF-8. Our CSV Linter automatically detects encoding issues and flags them.

Wrong Delimiter

If your CSV was exported from European software, it likely uses semicolons (;) instead of commas as the field separator — because commas are used as decimal separators in many European locales. If your import tool expects commas, every row will appear as a single column. Fix this by using our CSV Delimiter Converter to change the separator to match what your import tool expects.

Inconsistent Column Count

RFC 4180 requires every row in a CSV to have the same number of columns. If a row has too many or too few, most import tools will fail or skip that row. This usually happens due to unquoted values that contain the delimiter character, missing closing quotes, or data that was manually edited. Use our CSV Linter to identify which rows have column count mismatches and what line they are on.

Line Ending Problems

Windows uses CR+LF (\r\n) line endings and Unix/Linux/macOS use LF (\n). Some older tools only accept one format. If your file was created on Windows and you are importing into a Linux-based database, the carriage return characters may appear as extra characters in the last field of each row. Our CSV Validator automatically normalises line endings during validation.