What Shopify requires
Shopify’s documentation sets out the basics for a product CSV:
- The first line contains the column headers, and each column is separated by a comma.
- The file is saved in UTF-8 format with LF-style line endings.
- Quotes and apostrophes must be UTF-8 characters in the correct position.
- If you see unexpected characters or symbols after an import, the file probably wasn’t saved as UTF-8, and Shopify’s advice is to re-save it as UTF-8 and import again.
Shopify also notes that Google Sheets saves in UTF-8 by default, and that if you edit the CSV in Excel you should check Excel’s export settings to make sure commas separate the values.
Symptom 1: letters, quotes or symbols turn into odd characters
Typical examples are an accented letter turning into two characters (for example Café showing as Café), curly quotes turning into sequences such as “, or a � replacement character. These appear when a file saved in one character encoding is read as another. UTF-8 text read as a legacy encoding produces sequences like those, while legacy-encoded text read as UTF-8 often produces the � replacement character.
The fix belongs at the source: re-save the file in UTF-8 using the steps below, then re-import it.
Symptom 2: everything lands in one column, or columns shift
If the whole header row appears in a single cell, the file probably uses semicolons or tabs instead of commas. In many regional settings, Excel’s “CSV (Comma delimited)” writes whatever the system’s list separator is, and in much of Europe that is a semicolon. Open the file in a text editor: a first line like Handle;Title;Variant Price confirms it.
Fix it by exporting from Google Sheets (which writes commas as separators), by changing the list separator in your operating system’s regional settings, or by converting the file.
How to export the right format
| Program | What to choose |
|---|---|
| Excel | File → Save As → CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (*.csv). The plain “CSV (Comma delimited)” option does not save as UTF-8. |
| Google Sheets | File → Download → Comma Separated Values (.csv). |
| Apple Numbers | File → Export To → CSV… and set Text Encoding to Unicode (UTF-8). |
| LibreOffice Calc | File → Save As → Text CSV, tick “Edit filter settings”, then choose character set Unicode (UTF-8) and field delimiter ,. |
Check the file in a text editor before importing
- Open it in Notepad++, VS Code or another plain-text editor.
- Look at the first line: columns should be separated by commas, not semicolons or tabs.
- Find a product with an accented character and confirm it looks right.
- Check the editor’s status bar: it should report UTF-8. If it also offers an option to switch from CRLF to LF line endings, use LF to match Shopify’s documentation.
Already imported with bad characters?
Correct the file and import it again, with Overwrite products with matching handles selected. If that option is not selected, Shopify ignores products whose handles already exist, so nothing will be fixed. Overwriting replaces matching columns and treats blank cells as blanks, so read our guide to updating products without deleting data first and test with one or two products.
What ShopiClean does with encoding and separators
Disclosure: ShopiClean is our own product. Everything in this guide can be done by hand in a spreadsheet; the tool simply automates the checks. The scan and the on-screen 5-row preview are free, and downloading the repaired file needs a 7-Day Pass ($9).
What it does:
- Detects a Windows-1252 file (a common Excel export) and saves the result as UTF-8.
- Converts semicolon- or tab-separated files to comma-separated files.
- Writes the repaired file as UTF-8 without a byte-order mark and with LF line endings.
- Keeps accents in titles and descriptions. In product handles it replaces accents with plain letters (for example
cafébecomescafe), because handles can’t contain accented characters.
What it does not do:
- It does not repair text that already contains garbled characters. In our test, a file that literally contained
Cafécame out unchanged, and no warning was shown. Fix those from the original source. - Encoding detection is a best guess, so spot-check accented words in the repaired file.
Sources and how this guide was checked
The Shopify behaviors described above were checked against the Shopify Help Center pages below on 17 October 2026. Shopify can change how imports work, so if something here differs from what you see, trust Shopify’s documentation.