Import troubleshooting
Fix illegal quoting in a Shopify CSV
A quote error is a file-structure problem. Inspect the raw record before changing product text: removing every quote can turn one description into several columns.
Documented error
Illegal quoting on line
Find the record, then the field
The reported line can be inside a description that spans several physical lines. Start above it and inspect where the record opens. Compare its column boundaries with a nearby record that imports correctly.
- Keep an untouched copy of the original export.
- Open a copy in a plain text editor with line numbers.
- Locate an opening quote without a matching closing quote, or a quote inside a quoted field that has not been escaped.
- Repair only that boundary, then parse the complete file again.
Keep punctuation that belongs to the product
In the example, the description contains both a comma and a quoted phrase. The outer quotes protect the comma; doubled inner quotes preserve the phrase. This is an original synthetic example, not a platform template.
Title,Description
Travel mug,"Steel, marked ""take it outside"""When to return to the source
If a missing quote has swallowed the rest of the catalog into one field, a parser cannot know which line breaks were descriptions and which were records. Re-export from the source system or repair the file with the source catalog beside it. Do not accept guessed row boundaries.
Worked example
A quote inside an already quoted description
Title,Description
Travel mug,"Steel, marked "take it outside""Title,Description
Travel mug,"Steel, marked ""take it outside"""The resulting description remains Steel, marked "take it outside".
What this check cannot establish
Golanto blocks machine export when parsing is structurally ambiguous. It cannot reconstruct missing source text or prove how an importer will interpret malformed records.
Check your file
Start with a copy. Review changes before downloading your import file.
Open the Shopify CSV fixer