@ressa thanks again. I did actually keep the lines shorter than the existing lines in the file, but I didn't think to realise that they were hyperlinks so they weren't actually part of the printed characters in the line. I have shortened the lines so they are all less than 60 characters and saved it. If I have missed something then I have no problem if you or someone else wants to fix it, as I'm a noob with the process.
Fully agree that a comment should appear on that module page and if possible on
https://www.drupal.org/project/csv_importer →
as well. I want this module to be successful and not have people give up like I almost did because of an unknown technicality with variants of UTF8 encoding.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. If anyone using this module has trouble with only the first digit or 2 of a long number importing into a numeric field, especially if you are using Excel to prepare your csv file - you need to remove the commas from any numbers (i.e. uncheck the commas option in the number format). Even though they are delimited with double quotes, the importer doesn't recognise commas in a number and stops when it finds one.
@ressa, Thank you for your comment. I have edited the README and created a merge request as you suggested, but this won't help most people as they won't see the README as they don't look at the module's code.
The comment should be added to the Module page but I can't see any way to do that. The relevant issue could then be closed.
Please add a comment to the module page and/or documentation page for the unfixed major issue that has existed for 4 years regarding Windows / Microsoft Excel saving csv files in the incorrect UTF-8 format. Users get the misleading and incorrect error "Your CSV has missing required fields: name", despite the field existing in the csv file. Given that Microsoft Excel will be used by a lot of people with data looking to upload it, this will save many hours of wasted time and get more people to use this module instead of getting frustrated by the error and abandoning it.
The following simple fix is hidden within comments for the issue but should be prominently shown on module and/or documentation pages:
- Open the csv-file in Notepad ++
- Open the Encoding menu and change the format from "UTF-8 BOM" to "UTF-8"
- Save the file
Even in 2023, Microsoft Excel creates a csv file in the wrong "UTF-8" format.
It gives the confusing error: "Your CSV has missing required fields: name"
Follow the instructions in comment #6 to change the file format from "UTF-8 BOM" to "UTF-8" and the import will work correctly.