Uploading CSV file throws an error
Hi, I'm new here and currently using Zephyr Scale as our test management tool. I have a question about uploading CSV files. Every time I try to upload a file, I get an error. I even tried uploading a...
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MisterB
Champion Level 3
Champion Level 3Hi,
I can try to help. If you haven't seen the relevant Zephyr Help page you can read that here
To verify that a 'good' file does import I would try importing a 1 record CSV file for the least amount of fields needed, so all you need is 1 column of data which you would map to the Name column. That really should work and prove that everything works as it should.
From there, I would add 1 row of your import file with all the fields you are importing, and see if that works. If it does, expand until you hit the error. When you hit the error check your data content - or you could do this first - and look for carriage returns, other delimiters just general weirdness. It'll be something like that. Opening the CSV file in Notepad or another basic text editor with word wrap disabled might be easier. When viewed like this you can scroll left<>right and it becomes pretty obvious when a row of data looks different to the others.
Here's some info I found on problematic characters when parsing CSV data:
| Problematic Character / Issue | Why It Causes Issues | How to Fix It |
|---|---|---|
| Comma (,) | Treated as a column separator; unescaped commas split fields incorrectly. | Enclose affected fields in double quotes ("like, this"). |
| Double Quote (") | Used to wrap text fields; unescaped quotes confuse parsers. | Escape with another quote ("He said ""hi"""). |
| Newlines (\n, \r\n) | Treated as a new row even inside a field. | Wrap the field in double quotes ("Line 1\nLine 2"). |
| Delimiter Collisions | Custom delimiters (e.g., ;, ` | , \t`) can appear in text and break parsing. |
| Unescaped / Inconsistent Quotes | Mismatched or malformed quotes throw off the parser. | Ensure consistent quoting and escape double quotes properly. |
| Null Bytes / Control Characters | Parsers may reject or crash when encountering binary or control characters. | Sanitize the data—remove or encode problematic characters before writing the CSV. |
| Encoding Issues | Wrong encoding (e.g., not UTF-8) can corrupt non-ASCII characters. | Use UTF-8 encoding (optionally with BOM) when exporting the file. |
| Extra / Missing Columns | Parsing breaks if line structure is inconsistent, often due to the issues above. | Identify and fix malformed rows with unexpected column counts. |