File and header errors: when Shopify rejects the CSV itself
These are the errors that fire before a single product is read. They're the most confusing ones, because the file looks perfectly normal in your spreadsheet — the damage is in characters you can't see.
"Unquoted fields do not allow \r or \n"
Unquoted fields do not allow \r or \n (line 2).
Cause: there's a line break where the parser doesn't expect one. In practice this is almost always one of:
a blank row in the file — often left behind after deleting products, or an empty row of commas at the end;
a description containing a line break that isn't wrapped in quotes;
old Mac-style line endings (a bare carriage return) from a file that's travelled between systems.
About that line number: it counts physical lines in the file, not products. A single product whose description contains five line breaks occupies six physical lines — so "line 2" can easily point at something that is nowhere near the second product. This is the single biggest reason merchants spend an afternoon looking in the wrong place.
Fix: delete every empty row (including trailing rows that look empty but contain commas), and make sure any cell containing a line break is quoted. Re-saving through Google Sheets usually normalizes the line endings.
"Any value after quoted field isn't allowed"
Any value after quoted field isn't allowed in line 2
Cause: a cell's closing quote has something after it other than a comma or the end of the line — for example "Blue Widget" (new). This happens when a description contains a quotation mark that wasn't doubled up.
Inside a quoted CSV field, a literal " must be written as two quotes:
Wrong: "He said "hello" to me"
Right: "He said ""hello"" to me"
Fix: find the cell with the stray quote and either double it up or remove it. Smart/curly quotes (“ ”) pasted from Word are safe — it's the straight " that breaks parsing.
"Invalid CSV Header: Missing headers: Title"
Invalid CSV Header: Missing headers: Title
Cause: Shopify can't find a column it needs — even though you can plainly see it in the file. The usual reason is that the header row has been damaged by the spreadsheet program:
an invisible byte-order mark at the very start of the file, which makes the first header read as something like Handle rather than Handle;
the file was saved in a non-UTF-8 encoding, so accented or special characters mangled the header;
a stray space, a merged cell, or an extra blank column that shifted the headers;
the file isn't really a CSV — it's an .xlsx renamed, or semicolon-separated because of a regional setting.
Fix: the reliable repair is to copy the contents into a fresh sheet in Google Sheets and use File → Download → Comma-separated values. That produces clean UTF-8 with no BOM. Check the header spelling against Shopify's template while you're there.
Why Excel keeps breaking your CSV
Excel is the most common source of these three errors, and it does the damage silently on save:
it writes a BOM at the start of UTF-8 files;
it may use your regional list separator (a semicolon) instead of a comma;
it converts straight quotes to curly ones and can autocorrect values;
it reformats anything that looks like a number — SKUs and barcodes with leading zeros lose them, and long barcodes turn into scientific notation like 5.9012E+12;
it can rewrite dates into a different format entirely.
If you must use Excel, import the CSV via Data → From Text/CSV (choosing UTF-8 and setting SKU/barcode columns to Text), and check the file afterwards. Google Sheets is the safer default for CSV round-trips.
The quick pre-flight checklist
UTF-8 encoding, no BOM, LF line endings.
No blank rows anywhere — including at the end.
Every cell containing a comma, quote or line break is wrapped in quotes, with internal quotes doubled.
Header row matches Shopify's field names exactly; Handle and Title present.
Comma-separated, not semicolon-separated.
SKUs and barcodes still have their leading zeros.
Check your file before you import
Our free browser tool reports every problem on this page — blank lines with their true physical line number, BOM and line-ending problems, broken quoting, duplicate or unrecognized headers — and can hand back a cleaned, import-ready copy. Nothing is uploaded; your catalog stays on your device.