Preparing your file
Here are some things to check before doing a CSV or XML file import.
Maximum number of contacts
Don't exceed 20 000 contacts per file. This is not a hard limit but a strong recommendation, since large files can make the server slow and risk causing a timeout.
Caution
Keep the number of contacts per file under 20 000.
Encoding and syntax
The encoding of your CSV and XML files must be UTF-8.
For XML files, follow the scheme specified per import type (Contacts import, Transactions import). It is also good practice (although not mandatory) to follow the XML-syntax provided per object. When these field names are followed, no client specific XSLT transformation needs to be done on the Engage side of the integrations.
Time and dates
The required date format is ISO 8601 with a time zone designator, for example: 2021-01-26T15:10:17+01:00.
Date of birth (for example on a Contacts migration) is allowed to also use the simpler: YYYY-MM-DD.
Other CSV information
Your CSV should use semicolon (;) as a delimiter to separate the fields. This also means that you can't use ; anywhere in a value string. The order of the fields in a CSV does not matter.
Some characters can break a file import and might need to be escaped before import. For example, the double quote character ("). A double quote can be a part of a product name or description, since " is the symbol used for "inch": Samsung 42 " TV. Fix this by adding a backslash before every " in your CSV (this is called "escaping" the character). A search-and-replace is probably the best way to do this. The example above will now be Samsung 42 \" TV .