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Common issues impacting data uploads
Common issues impacting data uploads

Learn about the common reasons a data set may fail to upload correctly and how to resolve the issues.

Trish Pencarska avatar
Written by Trish Pencarska
Updated over a week ago

Relative Insight will automatically detect the file type you are uploading. However, occasionally there might be a discrepancy between what is uploaded and what is expected by the platform.

The table below shows the most common upload issues and how to easily fix them.

Common upload issues and recommended fixes

Issue

Fix

The file is shown with a status of 'Processing'

This indicated the data remains in the queue to be processed. When this occurs all you have to do is wait. Please do not attempt to upload the data again.

Column headers/titles do not correspond to the expected values for the selected data source/format

The platform has been trained to know the format in which data gets exported from various sources. When a file format does not match the expectation, the upload may fail. When using a data source-specific parser, ensure you have not altered the file in any way before uploading it to Relative Insight.

Missing column headers/titles

Column headers are used to confirm the format of a data set. Check that all columns in your uploaded file have been properly titled.

Extra header rows

Each column should contain a single header (typically in row 1 of the spreadsheet). Remove any additional or empty header rows from your spreadsheet before uploading.

No text column is included in the imported file

Relative Insight needs text in order to perform its analysis. Ensure at least one column is classified as text. If using the Relative Insight generic spreadsheet format, ensure the file includes a column titled 'text'.

Too many columns in a file

When a data set contains a very large number of columns, it may fail on upload. Open the spreadsheet, remove any unnecessary columns, save, and try again.

Data spread across multiple tabs with overlapping column headers

Make it easier for the platform to understand your data file by consolidating data onto one tab and removing duplicate headers.

.csv or .txt file not saved in UTF-8 format

There are several different file encoding formats that determine how characters in a file are stored. UTF-8 is the most common way format as it covers the most common character sets and emojis. This can be selected when adjusting file format before saving a file.

Unsupported file format

File types including .docx, .rtf, .xlsm, xls, .pdf are not supported and must be converted into .csv, .xlsx or .txt prior to upload (dependent on the parser you have chosen).

The file shows a word count of zero

This is likely a result of cleaning options being enabled. Simply disable the cleaning options and try again.

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