Title: CVS Import Characters
Last modified: February 1, 2018

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# CVS Import Characters

 *  Resolved [NetzzJD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/netzzjd/)
 * (@netzzjd)
 * [8 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cvs-import-characters/)
 * What characters are not allowed in a CVS import? My imported file is recognizing
   the standard columns and all my other custom columns, but no data is being created.
 * Looking at my CVS in plain text, I see a number of double quotes(“), single quotes(‘),
   colons(:), semicolons(;), slashes(/), dashes(-),and commas(,) within the fields.
   For example, we have an “Office Hours” column with “Monday-Friday, 8:00 – 4:30”
   as the data. I can imagine commas especially mess up the import, but any other
   characters I should look at parsing before uploading/importing?
 * Thanks!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  Plugin Author [ERA404](https://wordpress.org/support/users/era404/)
 * (@era404)
 * [8 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cvs-import-characters/#post-9928767)
 * Hello [@netzzjd](https://wordpress.org/support/users/netzzjd/)
 * Have you tried importing an XLS(X) instead of a CSV?
 * We sometimes recommend creating a new sheet (in Excel), copying the data from
   the original document, and pasting the “values”* into the new spreadsheet. Save
   the new spreadsheet as an XLSX and attempt the import with that data file instead.
 * Please let us know your findings.
 * * Paste Values: [https://www.google.com/search?q=excel+paste+values&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=excel+paste+values&tbm=isch)
 *  Plugin Author [ERA404](https://wordpress.org/support/users/era404/)
 * (@era404)
 * [8 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cvs-import-characters/#post-9945202)
 * [@netzzjd](https://wordpress.org/support/users/netzzjd/)
 * You haven’t responded to let others know if your issue was resolved by importing
   an XLS(X) in place of your CSV.
 *  Thread Starter [NetzzJD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/netzzjd/)
 * (@netzzjd)
 * [8 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cvs-import-characters/#post-9948490)
 * Apologies, I did try a plain XLS(X) file as well, but it failed to import data
   too. I believe it was actually related to a column we had with website URLs, 
   but still not sure if it was character specific related or not. Data was in this
   format “bellcountytx.com”, “www.co.bellcounty.com”, or “www.bellcounty.com/departments/”,
   etc. I removed that column from the file and the data imported successfully after
   that.
 *  Plugin Author [ERA404](https://wordpress.org/support/users/era404/)
 * (@era404)
 * [8 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cvs-import-characters/#post-9948986)
 * Hello [@netzzjd](https://wordpress.org/support/users/netzzjd/),
 * It sounds like it was just a problem with the source material (wherever you copied
   the URLs from), that produced un-usable characters. StaffList will import foreign
   characters without issue, so I can’t imagine what went wrong.
 * As long as your issue is resolved, I’ll close out the inquiry. Thanks.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘CVS Import Characters’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 4 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [ERA404](https://wordpress.org/support/users/era404/)
 * Last activity: [8 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cvs-import-characters/#post-9948986)
 * Status: resolved