Uploading a File

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Our system is designed to handle CSV for all delimiters. However, if you do run into any errors, there are a few things you can do to make the process more smooth:

  • If you are using a spreadsheet or CSV, make sure that all of your emails are in the same column.
  • Before uploading a CSV, it is always a good idea to open your list in a spreadsheet editor (Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc or Google Sheets) and save as a CSV. These programs ensure that your CSV is properly formatted.

You can find information on how to convert files to CSV here. If you are still experiencing difficulties, please reach out and let us help.

The Difference Between “Number of Rows” and “Total Emails Found”

When NeverBounce indexes a file to be validated, there is usually a difference between the number of records in the file and the number of actual email addresses found and prepped for validation.

There are a couple reasons why this happens:

Before a list is validated, NeverBounce “indexes” a list. This means taking a look at the file to discover the amount of email addresses to be validated. During indexing, NeverBounce automatically removes syntactically invalid records. These include:

  • Blank cells in the “email address” column
  • Incomplete email addresses (i.e. “@example.com,” “john.doe@,” “janedoe”)
  • Title/header rows

Sometimes data is corrupted or otherwise unreadable by our system. In those instances, you may see a large difference between the number of rows in your file and the number of email addresses found.

Some examples of corrupt data:

  • Addresses surrounded by punctuation or other characters may be read as invalid (i.e. <johndoe@example.com>)
  • Using non-UTF characters will also often not register as an email address.

Some of these are easily fixable, see below for suggestions.

Fixing a Failed List

Most times when a list fails, it means that the file had issues converting to the CSV format.

The most common remedy to fixing the formatting issue is to open the file in any spreadsheet editor and re-save it as a CSV.  You can try the following:

  1. For small lists (less than 200,000 rows) we recommend any of the major spreadsheet editors. See this for additional guidance.
  2. For large lists, we highly recommend (and use ourselves) a program called CSVED. It is free to use and very helpful for maintaining large amounts of data. You can download CSVED here.
  3. For very large lists, please contact support so that we can help you with handling these large files.

Another fix we often help our customers with is removal of non-accepted characters. It can be helpful to open a list in a simple text editor (notepad or text-edit) and look for characters that look out of the ordinary.  If you do find any non-standard characters, use "Find and Replace" and switch out those characters for a space.

After you have tried these two options, then re-upload the list.
If you have any additional difficulty, please contact our support staff with any further questions.

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