CSV Excel File issues on Import/Export

[jody_leonard]

While going through some recent training material, I stumbled across one of the presenters who said: "You should try to avoid using excel when doing these imports and exports. Excel has some odd behavior that inserts some extra data into csv files when it saves them. I recommend using google spreadsheets or open office when you save them." This raised quite a few questions for me. I am new to our company and so I am learning Magento individually as I go right now. I have seen issues and tickets swirling around where products did not mass import correctly. I want to understand more about the comment made by Magento in training related to using excel and the possible issues. Has anyone encountered this and have you adopted a process where excel is not used?

[Firebear Studio]

Hi @jody_leonard,

Try to use Google sheets, that's the most widespread format nowadays for import/export. As Excel has different versions and they may have some significant changes between each other. I agree with extra-data it may add. So the best way to use the latest Excel version or Google sheets to avoid a possibility that older Excel versions may cause incompatibility issues.

At Firebear most of our clients use Google sheets as a source.

Btw, what solution you use for import/export jobs?

Thanks.

[jody_leonard]

Currently, for data uploads, we have an external partner who provides us with a csv excel template. We provide the information in the specified format. With what I had heard in the training and some insight on hearing that we have had some funky import issues, I was curious to understand whether using excel as the template may be the driving factor. If using google sheets could alleviate future issues and work around solutions to scrub/double check excel templates, I would love to be able to nail that insight down and take that back to pertinent contacts in our company. Looking for SME wisdom in this area