The three ways Excel breaks imports
Each of these has broken a real import we have seen:
Common Scenarios:
- Encoding: Save As CSV uses ANSI/GBK/Shift-JIS on regional systems, producing mojibake in Shopify.
- Quotes: Excel rewrites doubled quotes ("") in text fields, breaking fields that contain quotes.
- Cell conversion: text like 001, long SKUs or 19-digit numbers get converted to numbers and lose leading zeros.
Catch Excel damage before the import
ShopTools validates encoding, quote integrity and leading-zero SKUs in one pass - so the damage Excel did during editing is found and repaired before Shopify rejects it.
Features:
- Encoding check: Detects ANSI/GBK/Shift-JIS saves
- Quote integrity: Finds quote damage from Excel re-saves
- SKU preservation: Flags converted SKUs that lost leading zeros