Product import doesn’t like special characters

  • Resolved lockoloop

    (@lockoloop)


    2 years, 2 months ago

    Hi,
    I’m trying to import products from a CSV file, but it display any special characters as ?, whether I write it HTML code or plain, for instance: ° or ° turn into ? after import. Happens both in the regular description field or custom meta fields (see Storage in the link I’m sharing).
    Is there something I should configure in the CSV file for it to work? What’s the appropriate behaviour?

    Thank you.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Support con

    (@conschneider)

    Engineer

    Hi @lockoloop,

    To my knowledge your database should not care about special characters, granted it’s collation is set to unicode.

    Could you upload a small test version of your CSV here that contains a handful of rows? We can do a quick test upload with you to see how it turns out.

    Kind regards,

    Thread Starter lockoloop

    (@lockoloop)

    Hi!

    So I actually found what the problem was: I exported the CSV sheet using the character set “Western Europe (Windows-1252/WinLatin 1)” which ignores certain special characters.
    So it’s more of an export to CSV issue on my side rather than a Woocommerce one ^^

    But maybe it would be nice to have it in a FAQ somewhere, like “make sure your CSV is encoded in UTF-8 before bugging us” ??

    I’m have the same (or is it similar?) problem. I have a CSV file encoded with UTF-8 (from excel) and have a meta: meta:brand with a field: S&B. Upon importing it’s converted to: S &amp ; B. This happens with all Product custom meta fields.

    Might there be a Woocommerce filter to fix this. I’ve looked…

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by ronr1999.
    • This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by ronr1999.

    Hi @ronr1999

    I understand you are experiencing the same issue and since every site is different and you’re not the person who originally started this topic then, per the forum guidelines, would you please start your own topic?

    We’ll be more than happy to help there ??

    Its not recommended to use a CSV from Excel. Its better to run a CSV exported from Google Sheets. Then you are sure the file is clean. It is even recommended by WooCommerce to use Google Sheets CSV export instead of Excel.

    Interesting… I’ll try that. Thanks for the tip!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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