Obvious/Help Center

Import Errors & Data Mismatches

Published February 27, 2026 · Last updated March 5, 2026 · 3 min read

Your import finished but something's off — fields are blank, numbers show up as text, or columns landed in the wrong place. Here's how to find the problem and fix it.

Field type mismatches

What you see: A number field shows $1,200 or N/A. A date field displays raw text instead of a formatted date.

What's happening: The data doesn't match the field type in your sheet. Number fields expect clean numbers — no currency symbols, no commas, no placeholder text.

How to fix it:

  1. Check your source file for extra characters — dollar signs, commas, text like "TBD" in numeric columns.
  2. Clean those values and re-import. Remove symbols and separators. Replace placeholders with blank cells.
  3. Or change the field type to string. Click the field header, select Edit Field, and update the type.

Tip: Drop your file into the chat and ask the agent to clean it before import. It flags and fixes formatting issues automatically.

Column headers don't match

What you see: Data lands in the wrong fields, or columns come through blank despite having data in the source file.

What's happening: Obvious maps columns to fields by matching header names exactly. Company Name won't match company_name. Capitalization, spacing, and underscores all matter.

How to fix it:

  1. Click any field header in your sheet to see its key.
  2. Rename your source file's column headers to match those keys exactly.
  3. Re-import.

This only applies when importing into a sheet that already has fields. New sheets create fields from your file headers automatically.

Encoding issues

What you see: Characters look garbled — é instead of é, or question marks where accented letters should be.

What's happening: Your file uses a character encoding other than UTF-8. Common with CSVs exported from older software that defaults to Latin-1 or Windows-1252.

How to fix it:

  1. Open your CSV in a text editor (not Excel — it masks encoding problems).
  2. Save as UTF-8 under Save As → Encoding → UTF-8.
  3. Re-import.

Exporting from Excel? Choose CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) — the standard CSV option doesn't guarantee UTF-8.

File format problems

What you see: The import fails, or all your data ends up in a single column.

What's happening: The file structure is off. Common causes: a renamed .xls posing as .xlsx, a CSV using semicolons instead of commas, or merged cells breaking the grid.

How to fix it:

  1. Open the file in Excel or Google Sheets and re-export as .csv or .xlsx.
  2. For CSVs, check the delimiter in a text editor — values should be separated by commas, not semicolons or tabs.
  3. For Excel files, unmerge any merged cells before importing.

Still stuck?

Drop your file into the chat and tell the agent what went wrong. It can analyze the structure, flag the problem, and fix the data directly.

Next steps

Was this helpful?