Mailing list import error

I am trying to import a CSV file into my mailing list - however even though I have very carefully checked the original file and it is clearly in three columns - email, first name, last name, many of the last names are showing as doubled. that is marysmith@gmail.com Mary Smith Smith

It seems that the error is created when there is an email which has either numbers in it or an underscore .. eg mary_smith@gmail.com or marysmith14@gmail.com.I have imported the same list into MailChimp with no problem and no errors seen.I have been in touch with Squarespace help but without any luck so far. If anyone has any solution to this or has experienced similar please let me know.

Be aware everyone.. make sure your mailing list is in the correct format and is clean before you do any import into the Squarespace mailing program.. because if you import a faulty list - then realise it and delete that list - it will remain in the background of your lists and if you import a cleaned up list with the same names in it.. those will simply be pulled from the background data and will show as faulty again.
Not having any ability to edit individual email addresses would seem to be an essential feature - but it is not yet available on Squarespace mailing.

Hi Shazar,

Have you solved this issue? I'm having the same problem.

Thanks

I had a list of 1,400 with brick wall of list verification errors

split into smaller lists of 333 and it worked! 

On 7/3/2019 at 5:46 AM, Shazar said:

I am trying to import a CSV file into my mailing list - however even though I have very carefully checked the original file and it is clearly in three columns - email, first name, last name, many of the last names are showing as doubled. that is marysmith@gmail.com Mary Smith Smith

It seems that the error is created when there is an email which has either numbers in it or an underscore .. eg mary_smith@gmail.com or marysmith14@gmail.com.I have imported the same list into MailChimp with no problem and no errors seen.I have been in touch with Squarespace help but without any luck so far. If anyone has any solution to this or has experienced similar please let me know.

Hi Shazar, same with me.. did you got solutions?

Not sure if this will help with your specific issues, but I was experiencing something similar before I tried these steps and I was then able to successfully import my CSV list:

1. Remove special characters in both first, and last name fields. I'm using Gsheets for editing the data and I first selected both columns, then "Find-and-Replace" from the menu to remove special characters like quotation marks, periods, hyphens, underscores, and spaces.
2. Make sure the CSV filename has NO special characters. "nameofyourfile.csv" VS "name-of your_file.csv". As you can see the second example here has a hyphen, space, underscore, and a period in the middle of the filename.

This worked for me and really I think it was the filename (STEP 02 here) that did the trick. Hope this helps!

Hi I am trying to import a mailing list, at first it was around 1200 subscribers, I tried uploading then it says its failed "This list has addresses that may cause high bounce rates and spam reports. Remove any fake, invalid, and improperly formatted addresses, and ensure you have consent to mail everyone on your list." then I user Bouncer, to remove all undeliverable, risky or spam emails. I uploaded the new CSV and its still the same.

Please help i do not want to manually add one each but I will if I have to.

Hi all I found a work around. 

I was having the same issues and found that using Mac numbers was the problem. Simply exporting as a .csv file was not working. What I did was export as an excel spreadsheet and then exported as a .csv file. This worked!

None of the above worked, but what did work was I deleted all the duplicates on my spreadsheet! File size, file name, number of emails, all didn't matter. It will only upload your list if you delete all the duplicates! Hope this helps

Also had problem importing my list through mac with numbers when saved in csv or excel format. Even when my boyfriend who has excel on his pc was saving in csv through his computer it didn't worked. 

WHAT WORKED was importing my list to google sheet and saving a csv file from there. No problem, even if the title automatically generated had spaces and hyphen. 

Hope that can help some of you guys. 

On 10/12/2022 at 12:27 PM, annebergeron said:

Also had problem importing my list through mac with numbers when saved in csv or excel format. Even when my boyfriend who has excel on his pc was saving in csv through his computer it didn't worked. 

WHAT WORKED was importing my list to google sheet and saving a csv file from there. No problem, even if the title automatically generated had spaces and hyphen. 

Hope that can help some of you guys. 

Thank you so much @annebergeron, this has really indeed saved my day. I have been trying to do this for the past 1 hour and your solution is the one that worked as I am working on a Mac. Thank you once again

I am a Mac user and default to Safari. I tried all of this and spend hours and the only thing that worked was to open the Squarespace website on Google Chrome and do it from there! Hope it helps!

I see this still isn't sorted. Very frustrating.

I spoke to live chat and they replied - Please note that troubleshooting the contents of a mailing list is outside the scope of Squarespace support, so we aren't able to assist with modifying that list ourselves.

Here was my solution: I did not download the profile csv file. Instead, I made sure to download the email list which I had named. Then it works. 

After researching this topic for two months I found the solution; I changed browser from Safari to Opera.

After trying everything here and failing over and over, I switched browsers to Google Chrome and it worked fine. Feels like SquareSpace should be able to make this more clear. 😠

I tried all of those techniques and nothing worked for me, so it looks like i will cancel my email campaigns with squarespace as i cannot do this basic function, smh.

Works fine in Mailchimp...

On 11/7/2023 at 8:20 PM, KatieJones said:

After trying everything here and failing over and over, I switched browsers to Google Chrome and it worked fine. Feels like SquareSpace should be able to make this more clear. 😠

After digging into all the failures and solutions, this helped for me as well!

Hey everyone! Today, I encountered this very problem while moving a mailing list from an old 7.0 site to a new 7.1 site that my client had set up. After going through some trial and error, I discovered a manual solution that I would like to share with you all.

Warning! it is a faff - but much better than uploading the subscribers one by one 🫠

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to do it: Make sure you get some tunes in your ears.

1. Export the mailing list file from your current site and open it in Google Sheets.

2. Verify that there are only three columns of data: 'Email', 'First_name', and 'Last_name', in that order. If any of your columns contain more data than it should, such as 'first_name' or 'Last_name', you'll need to fix this manually. 

3. If the second column contains both first and last names,e.g. 'Brad Pitt' in column B, then 'Pitt' is repeated in column C. you can sort them in Google Sheets by first creating a new blank column next to Column B - (this is to hold your separated data.)

This tutorial is good.

4. Highlight column B and select "Data" from the Google Sheets menu. Then, choose "Split Text into Columns" from the dropdown menu.

5. A "Separator" menu will appear. Choose "Space" from the options if your first and last names are separated by a space. If not, choose the appropriate separator.

6. The columns will now be separated. Inspect your sheet again and fill in any blanks.

7. Once all your first and last names are in place, delete any extra fourth column. You must have only three columns.

8. Check for any special characters or other anomalies using "find & replace."

9. Save your file and verify that it's named simply, such as "subscribers_main.csv." Note that Google Sheets may add an extra ".csv" to the filename upon saving. Be sure to remove this extra extension if it appears.

10. Upload the file. If the file is too large, you may need to split your mailing list into smaller chunks.

11. Finally, relax and celebrate with a coffee/tea/rum, dance or lie in a dark room! xx

After reading all of these comments and struggling for a couple of hours to figure out why some of my contacts were not importing into my SquareSpace mailing list I have come to the conclusion that email addresses that contain dashes or underscores will NOT import into a mailing list. Peace out - I'm moving to MailChimp. Ridiculous.