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Uploading a CSV file is a powerful tool to help add and manage lots of data in bulk. Once you learn how to work with CSV files, you’ll spend far less time manually updating data in your store. Check out today’s video, where Amanda walks you through the process and offers some helpful troubleshooting tips.

Here’s the transcript if you’re taking notes:

Hi, and welcome to “Tips, Tricks and Special Hints.” My name is Amanda, and this is Volusion’s series to help our merchants answer some of their most frequently asked questions. Today, we’re going to be talking about updating and troubleshooting your CSV files.

If you find yourself needing to update or add a lot of information about your products or customers, a CSV file might be your best option. You can use our bulk import and export tool to make large amounts of changes in a short amount of time. A CSV file, or a comma separated value file, is an Excel or a text file that breaks apart large pieces of information, using a designated character, usually a comma. The quickest way to get started is to use our bulk export tool to bring out all the information that you need into one CSV file, save it (always have a back-up!), and then you can make your changes to that.

Once you’ve made your updates to the information in your CSV file, and you’re ready to import it back into your store, sometimes you might see an error message. Two of the most common reasons for this are invalid characters and using the wrong data type. If you want to check to make sure that you don’t have any invalid characters, go through your CSV file and remove as many commas as you can. Excel or text editors will mistake these often for your delimiters and will remove them as you try to import, causing your information to run together and your whole file to error out.

The second one, data types, is a little bit tricky. To make sure that you have the correct data type, we find that it’s easiest to set all of your information to “Text.” If you’re using Excel, you want to open your CSV file, and going column-by-column, select the columns, click on “Text-to-Columns” and follow the click-through path to makes sure that all of your data is set to “Text”. An easy way to know if this was successful is to make sure there is a little green triangle in the top left-hand corner of each cell.

If you’re still having trouble importing your files, you can always go to support.volusion.com and search our KnowledgeBase for “Import/Export.” After that, if you want to create a ticket with our Out of This World™ Support team, I recommend attaching your file to your ticket so we can get started helping you faster.

Thanks for tuning in to “Since You Asked,” and happy importing!