CSV Import Errors
Invalid CSV format
An invalid CSV format error usually means the file breaks standard CSV rules—like inconsistent column counts, malformed quotes, an unexpected delimiter, or encoding issues. This guide helps you identify and fix these issues quickly.
Common causes
- Rows with different numbers of columns (missing or extra separators)
- Unclosed or malformed quotes (e.g., a quote inside a value not properly escaped)
- Wrong delimiter (comma vs semicolon vs tab)
- Encoding problems (UTF-8 vs Latin-1, smart quotes, hidden characters)
Examples of CSV issues that trigger this error
1) Inconsistent column counts
id,name,email
1,Ada,ada@example.com
2,Bob
3,Chris,chris@example.comRow 2 has fewer columns than the header.
2) Malformed quotes
id,comment
1,"hello world
2,"this is fine"Row 1 opens a quote but never closes it.
3) Wrong delimiter
id;name;email
1;Ada;ada@example.comThis is valid CSV for semicolon-delimited imports, but tools expecting commas may fail.
How to diagnose all issues quickly
Many importers stop at the first parsing error. CSV Checker scans the entire file and reports all structural and encoding issues at once—so you can fix everything before importing.