Troubleshooting CSV Deduplicator

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If CSV Deduplicator returns unexpected results, work through the symptoms below before assuming the file is unrecoverable. Most issues are encoding, delimiter, or header mismatches — not corrupt data.

Common symptoms and fixes

• Wrong number of columns: Find rows with unescaped commas or embedded newlines; use CSV Quote Fixer if quoting is broken.
• Garbled international characters: Re-export as UTF-8; remove BOM if the target system rejects it.
• Empty output after processing: Check filter conditions and whether all rows were deduplicated as duplicates.

Re-run after each fix. Client-side processing makes iteration fast.

Using Health Score for diagnosis

Pair this workflow with CSV Health Score when you need a graded quality report beyond the immediate task. Sort issues by severity — fix blocking errors before warnings. A score jump from C to A usually means one systematic fix (encoding, header rename, date format), not hundreds of row edits.

When to escalate

If the file fails every tool in CSV Tools, inspect raw bytes (hex editor or `file` command) for wrong encoding labels. Re-export from the source system with explicit UTF-8 CSV settings.

For vendor files, send them the validation report — specific row and column errors speed up their fix cycle.