Formatter: errors importing CSV file

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Updated at August 20th, 2025

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Table of Contents

Symptoms Causes How to fix it Type of CSV file Encoding of CSV File

Symptoms

You are using the Import CSV file transform in Formatter and receive one of the following errors when testing or running the Zap:

Could not determine delimiter
Utf8 coded can't decode byte xxx in position yyyy: invalid continuation byte

Causes

The transform could not recognize the delimiter or the encoding of the CSV file.

How to fix it

To fix this, go back to the Configure tab of your Formatter step and select different options for the following fields:

Type of CSV file

If you know your delimiter or you have a one-column CSV, you can select it in the Type of CSV File option. If your file still isn't recognized, you can select Text file (No CSV Parsing) to read the file contents as a text field, then use other Formatter steps to process the text.

Encoding of CSV File

If you don't know your file encoding, you can try Latin-1 or UTF-16 from the Encoding of CSV File option. Latin-1 is common for files that include diacritics, UTF-16 for files that include graphic characters.