Shopify product imports fail with “Illegal quoting in line 2” and “Invalid CSV header – Missing headers title,” especially after editing supplier files in Excel. Several users report the same; some abandoned Shopify due to lack of support, but multiple workarounds resolved it for others.
Likely cause: improper quoting in CSV fields (often in Body (HTML) or Title) or typographic quote characters.
Fixes reported to work:
Clean HTML/text fields: replace double quotes (") with single quotes (') or remove special quotes like ❝ (per Shopify doc linked).
Escape embedded double quotes by doubling them per CSV rules (e.g., 24" becomes 24""). A code snippet example was shared and confirmed successful.
Replace quotes in HTML fields with the HTML entity ".
Copy data into Google Sheets and export as CSV, then import to Shopify; this preserved correct quoting for one user.
Notes:
The header error (“Missing headers title”) may stem from malformed first rows due to quoting; proper escaping/export often resolves both errors together.
Status: Mixed outcomes. Original poster closed their store, but later posts confirm successful imports after fixing quoting as above.
When I download the “sample CSV file” to my computer, I open it and it looks different than in all the tutorials. the text is still in a row, devided by commas. No columns with headings. It looks like this: Handle, TitleBody (HTML), Vendor… all in one field.
So I figured, I have to open it in Excel using the “text import” method. I devide the text by comas and get the regular columns with its shopify headers: Handle | TitleBody (HTML) | Vendor…and so on.
From here on, everything looks normal like seen on all those tutorials. BUT: when I save the changes and try to import the file to shopify, it won’t work. Sure, because it’s an excel now, not a CSV. So I safe the Excel back to a CSV using the “safe as” tool, choosing CSV (comma delimited). (Tried all other CSV options there as well)
But the file I get will create the following error on shopify when uploading it:
"Illegal quoting in line 2
“Invalid CSV header - Missing headers title”
I read through various post here and on the www, also tried google sheets, asked to hire expert on shopify (but they charge 3k and more (product list from wholesaler are 8k products).
I believe it’s not that hard to change the csv-file from the supplier to the template of shopify, if you know what you are doing, unlike me. So i’m really desperate for someone who can help me out? If you could only how to do it for one product, i’m willing to pay for the assistance, so i can do the rest myself.
Hope I can find an answer here and finally start my shopify store before the free trial runs out… Thank you in advance.
nope i never got this sorted .. i even emailed the shopify support and waited 2 weeks for a response which never came .. i ended up tearing down my site and transferring it over to wix.com which ended up looking like a far superior site once i had finished it and adding products was far more simple
Hi @Krisn I was facing the same issue for the illegal quoting problem as well. My solution is under the Body(HTML) columns in the product csv file. I replace the double quotation marks (") to single quotation (') (Or may be you can try copy the value from this field to notepad and see any weird special character for example my case the special character I have is ❝ which is not allowed in shopify.
Thank you so much for this reply! I had the same problem and this fixed it. It was literally so easy to do and I didn’t at all have to edit the document. I have now succesfully imported my products. Everyone, vote this one up!