Common Shopify CSV Errors We Repair Automatically
Shopify's CSV importer is notoriously strict. Here is how CleanMyCSV resolves the 4 most frequent import blocks:
1. "Illegal UTF-8 Byte Sequence" & Corrupted Accents
When exporting product lists from Excel on Windows (Windows-1252 format), French or international accents break into gibberish (e.g. "é" instead of "é"). Shopify rejects these files outright. CleanMyCSV converts your file into pure UTF-8 with BOM, perfectly preserving titles, HTML descriptions, and handles.
2. Column Shifts & Semicolon Delimiters
European Excel exports use semicolons (;) as column separators instead of commas (,). This dumps all your product attributes into a single row on Shopify. Our engine auto-detects the delimiter and re-aligns all columns (Title, Handle, Variant Price, Image Src) seamlessly.
3. Invalid Variant Prices & Currency Formatting
Shopify requires prices as pure decimal numbers (e.g., 29.99). Price columns containing currency symbols ($ 29,99 or 29,99 €) fail to import. CleanMyCSV strips currency characters, normalizes comma decimals into dots, and isolates currency codes into dedicated fields.
4. Stripped SKUs, Barcodes & Zip Codes
Excel strips leading zeros from numeric strings (turning SKU 00123 into 123 or zip code 02110 into 2110). Our Anti-ID safeguard and zip code restoration algorithms identify business parameters and rebuild missing zeros before you import into Shopify.