Too few column delimiters

  • Hi there,

    Google Merchant Center gives me this error:

    The product data you submitted in your feed does not meet the product data specification, so your products were not approved. Fix and update your feed to display products to customers. To see all issues, go to Diagnostics.

    and further down:

    Too few column delimiters

    Your items contain fewer attributes than those specified in the header row.

    Learn more

    Below are some example items that are affected by this issue.

    And indeed when I open the feed in Excel I can see that the product data is not in a proper table. At first glance it looks like empty cells just didn’t get a delimiter (in my case “|”). So those rows got “squashed together”.

    Is this a known problem? I found one other topic like this here on the board, unfortunately there is no clue as to what could be the reason.

    Thanks in advance for you help!

    Kind regards,
    Laurent

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Thread Starter biiissen

    (@biiissen)

    Oh yeah and I forgot to mention, in the beginning, a few days ago when I set up the feed it worked perfectly fine and I was super happy with the result. It’s just now, after the few days that this problem comes up.

    Hi,

    Thanks for using our plugin and reaching out to us. Can you share the product feed URL with us so we can have a look?

    Is there a specific reason as to why you have chosen for a CSV file instead of XML which is less prone to issues such as the one you are experiencing?

    Thread Starter biiissen

    (@biiissen)

    Hi @supportadtribes,

    thanks for your quick response.

    Sure, here you go: https://de.aqua-nobilis.com/wp-content/uploads/woo-product-feed-pro/csv/PbnGBofaZjeCwocKTz2sPUjiBYw82C9W.csv

    When choosing XML I had minor issue with the shipping not being set properly. But I would be fine with XML too, it’s just more difficult to check if the structure is right, compared to a csv sheet.

    Thanks again for your help!

    Kind regards,
    Laurent

    • This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by biiissen.

    Hi,

    Thanks for this. I had a look at your CSV and it seems you have used a pipe (|) as seperator whereas Google is expecting a tab, see: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160588?hl=en

    So please change the delimiter to a tab instead. That should hopefully solve the issue at hand.

    Thread Starter biiissen

    (@biiissen)

    Hi @supportadtribes,

    thanks for your reply.

    I don’t think, this delimiter is the problem. Google auto detects it and you can even choose from the list. See below:

    The issue is that that there are too few delimiters in some rows, so the feed isn’t produced in the right manner. And strangely enough it works for 2-3 days and then got broken, if I remember well, there has been an update of your plugin.

    Thanks again for further help.

    Kind regards,
    Laurent

    Hi,

    We opened your CSV feed and imported into Excel, see: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zbz69gi6mar7n28/csv-imported.xlsx?dl=0

    When opening it it doesn’t seem there is an issue with too few delimiters, all the data seems to sit in the right columns?

    Exactly because of these reasons we prefer uploading data into XML format. Can you give that a try?

    Thread Starter biiissen

    (@biiissen)

    Hi @supportadtribes,

    thanks for your feedback.

    Well no the table is not correct. Please look at the right in the column shipping for example. The value are often moved to the left. Indicating that the cells more to the left (I guess empty cells) didn’t get a delimiter. This is exactly what Google gave the error message for.

    Yeah I’m looking into the XML solution, but I have issues with the shipping, as I used flexible shipping plugin and the shipping cost are wrong as well as the name of the service is not as I want it to appear. But I guess it’s better to start a new thread?

    Thanks again for your valuable help!

    Kind regards,
    Laurent

    Hi Laurent,

    I see, you are correct indeed. Can’t the issue be caused by the fact that some of the values you added to the feed also have a pipe (|) in them? Which is the same as the delimiter you have chosen and thus the data gets split in unexpected places?

    Thread Starter biiissen

    (@biiissen)

    Hi @supportadtribes,

    I’m pretty sure I don’t have pipe delimiters as content in the feed. And if so I would have more fields not less?
    It looks a bit like the empty fields not getting a delimiter.

    And it worked when I set the feed up. The table looked good an Google said it was OK an then two days later I get a warning that the data is not formatted correctly.

    If I remember well, there has been an update from your site, but I’m not 100% sure and don’t know if this is directly linked.

    Kind regards,
    Laurent

    Hi Laurent,

    The last release of our plugin is not related (it was only to test compatibility with the latest release of WooCommerce).

    I would still opt for creating a feed in XML format and possibly add the shipping costs to your merchant center directly instead of trying to add them to your XML feed.

    Thread Starter biiissen

    (@biiissen)

    Hi @supportadtribes,

    thanks for your help.

    Well the shipping costs depend on the country and product price, so I cannot set that in the merchant center easily. I’d prefer give the correct price in the feed. I’ve opened a new topic for this.

    So there is no way to get the feed to work in CSV & pipe “|” delimiter?

    Kind regards,
    Laurent

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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