[ARCHIVED] Error while importing CSV?

[rking]

When importing ma CSV file that is export from our SIS, RenWeb, the SIS import goes smoothly, with some errors due to course naming. I set up excel to rename some of the courses and resave it as a CSV, but upon uploading back into Canvas, I get the following error:

No SIS records were imported. The import failed with these messages:

• Errors that prevent importing
  • - Error while importing CSV. Please contact support. (Error report 34770000000000618)

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

[dlyons]

Excel is unfortunately not a very good tool for working with CSVs in my experience. It doesn't handle UTF-8 encoding very well and often adds extra characters and other weirdness that can stop the import from working correctly. It also aggressively saves the file with the Excel file extension (.xls/.xlsx) which will prevent it from working also.

If at all possible I'd encourage you to use LibreOffice when working with CSVs; it's not as slick as Excel for general use, but when I was an admin working with CSVs daily I found LibreOffice didn't cause any of the encoding issues that Excel did. If you need Excel for part of your workflow, you can at least open the Excel created CSV in LibreOffice and make sure you don't see any oddball characters (they are almost never English letters so you'll know them when you see them.)

One last suggestion: if you still cannot get the CSV to import, contact Support and they can look at the file you are attempting to import and help you identify the issue more specifically.

[mwade]

FYI, Renweb is currently in the process of implementing the Canvas API.Contact Renweb Support for details.

[Robbie_Grant · Accepted solution]

 @rking ,

We are giving the Canvas Admins area a little bit of love (especially questions that are really, really old) and just want to check in with you.  This will also bring this question new attention. 

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie