Troubleshooting the Transporter app

The Transporter app can encounter errors when it processes your records and imports them as objects.

Shopify Plus

The Transporter app is available on the Shopify App store for Shopify Plus merchants only.

How the import process works

When you're troubleshooting the Transporter app, it can be useful to understand how the app uploads and imports your data and the common errors that can occur during these processes, and why some common errors can occur. The status of your imports can be found in your Shopify admin by going to Apps > Transporter.

When importing objects into your Shopify store, the Transporter app performs the following actions:

1. Uploads the file to a secure, Shopify-hosted staging location. To learn how Shopify protects the information that you upload, refer to Shopify's privacy policy.

2. Checks the file for structural and content format errors. If the Transporter app finds any errors, then your import fails and its status changes to Failed.

3. Imports the objects. The time an import takes to complete depends on the number of objects to be processed (on average the processing rate is 40 objects/second). When the import finishes, its status changes to Completed. If there were records that the Transporter app couldn’t import, then an Export errors link appears in the table.

At any time, you can stop the import of further objects by clicking Stop import. Objects that were imported before you stopped the import will stay in your Shopify store. When you stop an import, its status changes to Stopped.

Exporting and correcting errors

If your import has issues, then you can click Export errors to learn how to correct them. For more information on these error codes, refer to the list of common error codes below.

The process to correct errors is slightly different, depending on whether your import's status is Failed or Completed.

Failed

When the status of an import is Failed, it means there's an issue with the CSV file itself, and not with the content of the file. After you have reviewed the errors text file, fix the errors in your original upload file and then try uploading the file again.

Completed

If a Completed import has errors, then there there are errors in the individual records, rather than issues with the structure of your CSV file. In this case, only records without errors are created in Shopify. Records that have errors are not created, but are instead added to an export errors CSV file. You won't see the export errors CSV file until after the import is finished and the status is Completed. When the import completes, an Export errors link appears in the table.

The last column in each row of the errors CSV file describes the error for the record. After you have downloaded the file, fix the errors in this file and then upload it. You don't need to delete the error column before uploading this file.

In the following example, three customers could not be imported because they already existed in the store.

 First Name,Last Name,Email,Error(s)
 Jane,Doe,jane.doe01520022060@example.com,...,Email has already been taken
 Jane,Doe,jane.doe11520022060@example.com,...,Email has already been taken
 Jane,Doe,jane.doe21520022060@example.com,...,Email has already been taken

Shopify customers are identified by their unique email addresses, so these customers couldn't be imported because there were already records for their emails addresses in Shopify.

Common error codes

Common file errors include:

• Encountered a bug in the Shopify API, unable to save

  This error can appear for a few different reasons. THe most common cause of this error is a single metafield appearing more than once for a record. The Transporter app does not support records with duplicate metafields. If removing duplicate metafields doesn't resolve the issue, contact Shopify support.

• Failed. Response code = 400. Response message = Bad Request

  The Transporter app cannot create the object in Shopify because there are errors in the data. This is often caused by formatting the data incorrectly. Ensure that your data meets these requirements:

  • Currency values must be specified in ISO 4217 format (for example, USD).
  • Country, province/state, and postal/zip codes must be valid.
  • Phone numbers must be valid formats, country codes, and area codes.
  • Email addresses must have valid domains.
  • Financial Status must be one of the allowed values.
  • Fulfillment Status must be one of the allowed values.
  • Boolean values must be specified as true or false.
  • Any columns that require an integer (such as Product Variant Inventory Quantity in the product CSV or Lineitem Quantity in the orders CSV) will not import if you enter a decimal value. For example, enter 5 instead of 5.0. Some spreadsheet software (such as Numbers) can display decimal or floating point values as integers. Check your values in a text editor.
  • Any column that requires an integer (such as Total weight or Transaction Location ID in the orders CSV), will not import if you enter non-numeric values (such as letters).

• Value type is not included in list

  Check the values in the metafield columns. To import metafields, you need to include values in all of the following columns: Metafield Namespace, Metafield Key, Metafield Value, and Metafield Value Type. This error often occurs because there is an empty or invalid value in one or more of these columns.

• Column-name is invalid

  This error can appear for a few different reasons. For example, this error can occur because a column is case sensitive. For columns that accept a list of values, you need to follow the case that is used in column descriptions. For example, in the orders CSV the values in the Financial Status column are case sensitive. This means that if you entered Paid instead of paid, then the Financial Status is invalid error will occur. Check the rest of your columns to make sure that the values you've entered follow the correct format.

• Invalid order status - cannot be both fulfilled and canceled

  Shopify can't create orders that are both fulfilled and canceled. This error will occur if the following conditions are both true:

  • The order has a cancelled_at timestamp set.
  • The order has fulfillment_status set to fulfilled or partial.

  An order that has a cancelled_at timestamp set and fulfillment_status set to fulfilled or partial can be created successfully if financial_status is set to refunded.

If you encounter an error code that isn't listed here, then contact Shopify support.

Related links

• Importing data using the Transporter app
• About the Transporter app
• Transporter command-line tool