When uploading an invite CSV into your location, Traction Guest requires data to be entered in specific formats to be accepted. This article discusses how to solve for the errors you may encounter when attempting to upload your CSV.
If you are not already familiar with the CSV upload process, check out THIS article first.
Related Content
The Sections Covered Below Include:
Check that your headers are correct
Before diving into the individual errors, you need to make sure that the headers in row 1 of your CSV match exactly to the headers listed below. This is case-sensitive. (Mandatory fields are in red):
first_name
last_name
email
company
hosts
mobile
start_date
end_date
start_time
end_time
If a header is incorrect, you will receive an error which indicates every row of your CSV is invalid.
We recommend downloading our CSV template directly from the Traction Guest portal as the headers are pre-formatted for you.
Also, if you need to add host selection and mobile number to the template, ensure they are formatted like this:
mobile
hosts
Error Messages You May Encounter
Correct the email address format on rows
This error indicates there is an improperly formatted email under your ‘email’ column.
Common examples include:
Spaces within or after the email address
Invalid domain after the @ symbol. (eg. missing ‘.com’ at the end)
Invalid character (eg. comma, colon) included in email
No email included at all
NOTE: The row numbers displayed in the error do not account for the headers in row 1 of your CSV. You will need to add one to the row number indicated to find the exact row in your CSV. For example, if the error in Traction Guest says there is an invalid email in row 2, the actual invalid email will be in row 3 in the spreadsheet.
If you are assigning hosts to your invitees, ensure that you are entering the host’s email address exactly as they are listed within your host list in Traction Guest.
The start or end date column in your CSV must match the format you have selected within the date dropdown box in Traction Guest.
In the example below, the start date column for a visitor does not match the selected date in the CSV:
Note: Excel can automatically save columns with a specific date format. However, these date formats may not carry over when the spreadsheet is saved as a CSV. To solve for this, we recommended formatting your date columns in excel to ‘text’ rather than ‘date’. Then, manually type the date format to match an accepted format in Traction Guest (eg. 2021-06-21 to match YYYY-MM-DD).
Check that your end date is after the expected start date.
This error refers to a few different issues in the CSV data which Traction Guest will not accept. Common examples include:
Completely blank rows within in the CSV
Missing Start Date in the CSV
Start/end time not in military format
Start/end time does not match format of other rows (eg. no colon).
Blank Rows saved at the end of the CSV*
*In some cases, Excel will add blank rows to the end of the sheet which are not visible but are then saved within the CSV file. This will cause the upload in Traction Guest to fail with the “Something went wrong" error.
There are a few methods within excel that can be used to find and remove blank rows. We recommend you research these methods to find one that works best for you.