• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
1

Error - "Incoming Variable Library Is Invalid" while uploading a CSV data source file in Illustrator

Community Beginner ,
Jun 23, 2020 Jun 23, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hey all!

I'm trying to make a bunch of business cards using a template en masse with a Excel document.

This contains Inuktitut characters that I would like to remain in the finished product. I've tried it with and without the Inuktitut, all the cells are filled and I've done a search for all empty cells to be sure. Each time, the result is the same: invalid library. What could be going wrong?

 

Here is what happened when I tried to investigate possible problems listed here: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/illustrator/using/data-driven-graphics-templates-variables.html#Facingiss...

 

Your CSV file is not blank.
I've checked.

The spreadsheets that you've created using the latest version of Microsoft Excel are saved as CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv) or CSV (MS-DOS) (*.csv) and those created using Apple Numbers are saved as CSV format with Unicode (UTF-8) encoding. Data source files saved in any other file format such as Macintosh Comma Separated (*.csv) are not supported for data merge.
Done. Both with comma delimited and MS-DOS.

All columns have a data field name. For example, Illustrator displays the error message when a column in your data source file contains data but doesn't have a data field name.
Done. All columns have a data field name.

The data source file doesn't have a blank column in between any filled columns. For example, Illustrator displays the error message when column B and D in your data source file contain data but column C is empty.
There are no blank columns. I've used find and replace to verify.

A. Data field name is missing for a column B. There's a blank column between filled columns
There are no blank field names.

The data field names in your spreadsheet don't contain any blank spaces.
There are no blank spaces.

The paths referring to image and graph files in your source file don't contain any blank spaces.
There are no blank spaces, image files or graphs.

The graph files linked from your data source file are saved as comma-delimited (.csv) files.
There is no graph.

 

 

{Renamed by MOD}

TOPICS
Import and export

Views

37.4K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 3 Correct answers

New Here , Aug 11, 2021 Aug 11, 2021

For me what solved was changing the first line from:

Natanael5FA6_0-1628679429411.png

to:

Natanael5FA6_1-1628679471215.png

The simple space was keeling the file, haha.

Votes

Translate

Translate
New Here , Dec 07, 2021 Dec 07, 2021

The data field names cannot start with a number

 

This was my issue.

So annoying, the help doesn't say this anywhere.

Votes

Translate

Translate
New Here , Aug 08, 2023 Aug 08, 2023

I still had issues after trying these solutions. I was Downloading as CSV from Google Sheets and everything appeared right. But I finally cleaned and trimmed each cell and got rid of some hidden characters or spaces. My data set was quite large and I did not find these by visual examination at first. I put my data on one sheet and then used the =CLEAN(TRIM(data_range_here)) function to get it working.

Votes

Translate

Translate
Adobe
Adobe Employee ,
Jun 23, 2020 Jun 23, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hi there,

 

Sorry to hear about your difficulties. If I get it correctly, you are getting this error The incoming variable library is invalid while uploading a CSV data source file. There could be multiple reasons behind why this would have happened. Few of them are listed in this help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/in/illustrator/using/data-driven-graphics-templates-variables.html#Facingiss...). 

 

Let us know if this helps or if you have any further questions.

 

Regards,

Srishti

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jun 24, 2020 Jun 24, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you kindly for your advice. Here are the results of me having followed that link. Where do we go from here? Incidentally, using CSV with UTF-8 encoding did not preserve the special characters that are required for Inuktitut syllabics. 

 

Your CSV file is not blank.
I've checked.

The spreadsheets that you've created using the latest version of Microsoft Excel are saved as CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv) or CSV (MS-DOS) (*.csv) and those created using Apple Numbers are saved as CSV format with Unicode (UTF-8) encoding. Data source files saved in any other file format such as Macintosh Comma Separated (*.csv) are not supported for data merge.
Done. Both with comma delimited and MS-DOS.

All columns have a data field name. For example, Illustrator displays the error message when a column in your data source file contains data but doesn't have a data field name.
Done. All columns have a data field name.

The data source file doesn't have a blank column in between any filled columns. For example, Illustrator displays the error message when column B and D in your data source file contain data but column C is empty.
There are no blank columns. I've used find and replace to verify.

A. Data field name is missing for a column B. There's a blank column between filled columns
There are no blank field names.

The data field names in your spreadsheet don't contain any blank spaces.
There are no blank spaces.

The paths referring to image and graph files in your source file don't contain any blank spaces.
There are no blank spaces, image files or graphs.

The graph files linked from your data source file are saved as comma-delimited (.csv) files.
There is no graph.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Aug 30, 2020 Aug 30, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I have the same exact problem as the original poster. My file also does not break any of the rules in the help article you posted. The software does not seem to be worknig as intended.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guest
Sep 10, 2020 Sep 10, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I have this exact problem as well.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 19, 2024 Jan 19, 2024

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I've done all of this and still invalid library error message. very frustrating.

 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jun 25, 2020 Jun 25, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Does anyone else have any theories?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jun 26, 2020 Jun 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Bump!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Jun 26, 2020 Jun 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

If it doesn't work, can you try the VariableImporter script?

Illustrator is just very prissy about CSV ...

 

https://github.com/Silly-V/Adobe-Illustrator/blob/master/Variable%20Importer/VariableImporter.jsx

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Apr 12, 2021 Apr 12, 2021

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

You must replace the ; by , in the CSV file use a text editor for that and all should work after. 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Nov 03, 2021 Nov 03, 2021

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

This worked for me, thank you for the advice 🙂

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 16, 2021 Dec 16, 2021

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Great option. But doesn't it mean that we are not able to use texts with commas as values of the variables???

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 31, 2023 Mar 31, 2023

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

This works for me too, thanks! Moreover, when I replace ; to , in MS Excel - it doesn't work. But when I replace ; to , inside the txt file - I've got it)

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
May 11, 2021 May 11, 2021

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I know this is a super late reply, but did you try removing special characters? The / and ?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Aug 11, 2021 Aug 11, 2021

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

For me what solved was changing the first line from:

Natanael5FA6_0-1628679429411.png

to:

Natanael5FA6_1-1628679471215.png

The simple space was keeling the file, haha.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Nov 05, 2021 Nov 05, 2021

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Yes! That solved my issue!! Thank you!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Feb 11, 2022 Feb 11, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

This solved it for me as well!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Oct 20, 2022 Oct 20, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

THANK YOU!!!! (: That worked for me too!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 08, 2024 Mar 08, 2024

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hi! How did you do this?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Mar 08, 2024 Mar 08, 2024

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

You need to use a spreadsheet program like excel or google sheets to update the headers. The headers can't have spaces in them. So in the screenshot above the changed the header from "Variable 1" to "Variable1"

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 08, 2024 Mar 08, 2024

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

Amazing! It worked - thank you so much! 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 07, 2021 Dec 07, 2021

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

The data field names cannot start with a number

 

This was my issue.

So annoying, the help doesn't say this anywhere.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Oct 04, 2022 Oct 04, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you! That solved my issue!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 10, 2022 Jan 10, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Dear,

My Name is Puneet Agarwal,

I am also facing the same problem and tried checking all the pointers given here, but my problem still persists .

Can anyone help?

 

Thanks and Regards

Puneet

 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 20, 2022 Jan 20, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines