Advanced import settings
Detailed guide to advanced CSV import settings including date formats, delimiters, encoding, and troubleshooting.
Your CSV data isn't importing correctly, or you're seeing format errors. The advanced settings on Step 1 of the import wizard let you tell Gym Art Meets exactly how to read your file. Here's what each setting does and when to change it.
Date format
This controls how Gym Art Meets interprets the dates in your file. If your dates are showing up as invalid, this is almost certainly the fix.
MM/dd/yyyy
12/25/2023
US, Canada
dd/MM/yyyy
25/12/2023
Europe, most of the world
yyyy-MM-dd
2023-12-25
ISO standard, databases
MM-dd-yyyy
12-25-2023
US with dashes
dd-MM-yyyy
25-12-2023
Europe with dashes
dd.MM.yyyy
25.12.2023
Germany, Switzerland
MM.dd.yyyy
12.25.2023
Less common
yyyy/MM/dd
2023/12/25
Less common
yyyy.MM.dd
2023.12.25
Less common
If your dates look like "25/12/2023" but the importer defaults to MM/dd/yyyy, every date will fail. Change the format to dd/MM/yyyy and re-import.
Delimiter
This tells Gym Art Meets what character separates your columns.
Comma
,
Standard CSV files. This is the default.
Semicolon
;
Common in European locales where the comma is used as a decimal separator.
Tab
(tab character)
Tab-separated files, often from Excel exports.
Pipe
|
Rare, but some systems use it.
If all your data ends up in one column, the delimiter is wrong. Try Tab if the file came from Excel, or Semicolon if you're in a European locale.
Text qualifier
This tells the importer how to handle values that contain the delimiter character inside them (like a name with a comma in it).
Double Quote
"O'Connor, Patrick"
Standard. Works for most files.
Single Quote
'O'Connor, Patrick'
Uncommon, but some systems use it.
None
O'Connor Patrick
Only if your data has no commas or special characters in values.
Encoding
This controls how special characters (accents, umlauts, non-English letters) are read.
UTF-8
The safe default. Handles all international characters. Use this first.
ASCII
Only works for basic English characters. Rarely what you want.
ISO-8859-1
Western European characters. Try this if UTF-8 produces garbled text.
Windows-1252
Files created on older Windows systems. Similar to ISO-8859-1 with a few extras.
If you see garbled names like "JosA(c)" instead of "Jose", change the encoding. Start with UTF-8, then try ISO-8859-1.
Start row
This tells the importer which row has your column headers.
1
Standard files where row 1 is the header.
2
Files with a title or summary row before the headers.
3+
Files with multiple rows before the actual headers.
If the importer is treating your data rows as headers (or your headers as data), adjust this number.
End of line
This handles the difference between how Windows and Unix systems end each line in a text file.
LF
\n
Unix, Linux, macOS
CRLF
\r\n
Windows
Usually you don't need to change this. The importer auto-detects it. If you're seeing rows that don't split correctly, try switching between the two.
Quick troubleshooting
Dates are invalid
Date format
All data in one column
Delimiter
Garbled special characters
Encoding
Headers are wrong or missing
Start row
Names with commas get split
Text qualifier
Rows don't separate
End of line
What's next
Fix CSV import errors - Row-level error fixes on Step 2
CSV template and format - Column specifications
Related
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