Contacts not imported correctly

This article covers situations where an import completed without an error message, but the results are not what you expected: contacts are missing, fields are empty, or interests were not assigned. For imports that failed with a specific error message, see "Import errors" instead.

Contacts are missing after the import

Deduplication

Flexmail uses email address as the unique identifier for every contact. If your import file contains addresses that already exist in your account, Flexmail updates the existing contact record rather than creating a duplicate. These contacts are not "missing" but the count of newly added contacts will be lower than the number of rows in your file.

Contacts may be on the blacklist

Blacklisted contacts cannot be re-imported into your active contact database. If your file contained addresses that were previously blacklisted (through unsubscribes, bounces, or spam complaints), those rows are skipped silently during import.

Go to Contacts > All contacts and check the Blacklisted tab to see if the missing addresses are there.

Check all three tabs

Contacts created through an import are always added as confirmed contacts. However, it is worth checking the Confirmed, Unconfirmed, and Blacklisted tabs in your contact overview to account for all possible statuses.

Custom fields are empty after import

If contacts were imported successfully but their custom field values are empty, the most common cause is one of the following:

The field did not exist at import time

Custom fields must exist in your account before you import. If you import a file with a column for a field that does not yet exist, that column is skipped and the data is lost. Create your custom fields first, then re-import the file.

Column was not mapped during import

During the import flow, you map each column in your file to a field in Flexmail. If a column was left unmapped or mapped to the wrong field, its data will not appear on the contact record. Check the field mapping step in your next import to ensure every column is correctly matched.

Interests were not assigned

Interests can be assigned during import either via a dedicated column in your CSV or by assigning a shared interest to the entire import batch. If interest assignment did not work as expected:

• Interest names are case-sensitive. "Newsletter" and "newsletter" are treated as different values. Check that the names in your file exactly match the interest names in your account.
• The interest must exist in your account before import. Flexmail will not create new interests on the fly during an import.
• If you assigned an interest to the entire batch but some contacts did not receive it, check whether those contacts had previously opted out of that interest. Contacts who have explicitly unsubscribed from a specific interest cannot have it re-assigned via import.

Contacts are confirmed but not receiving campaigns

If contacts show as confirmed but are not included in your campaign sends, check the following:

• Segment conditions: verify that the contacts actually match the segment you are sending to. Open the segment and check how many contacts it currently contains.
• Language: if you are sending to a language-specific segment, contacts whose language field does not match will be excluded.

Your CSV file contains invalid characters

If your import fails or produces garbled text, the CSV file may contain characters that Flexmail cannot process. This typically happens with special characters such as accented letters, curly quotes, or characters from non-Latin scripts, when the file was not saved in the correct encoding.

Before importing, open your CSV file in a plain text editor and check for unexpected characters. The most common cause is saving the file from Excel with incorrect encoding. When exporting from Excel, choose CSV UTF-8 (with BOM) rather than standard CSV.

Finding invalid characters with Notepad++

If you cannot identify the problem visually, Notepad++ (a free Windows text editor) can help locate invalid characters using regex search:

• Open your CSV file in Notepad++.
• Go to Search > Find (Ctrl+F) and select the Regular expression search mode.
• Search for the pattern [^\x09\x0A\x0D\x20-\x7E] to highlight any character outside the standard printable ASCII range.
• Review each match. Replace invalid characters manually, or remove the affected rows.
• Save the file as UTF-8 encoding before importing.

If you see rows with corrupted text after import, re-export your source file with UTF-8 encoding and repeat the import. Flexmail will update the existing contact records without creating duplicates.

Common mistakes to avoid

Creating custom fields after the import

This is the most common import issue. Always create all custom fields before importing contacts. Data from columns with no matching field is permanently lost and cannot be recovered from the import.

Using a different delimiter than expected

Flexmail expects a CSV file with a comma or semicolon as the column separator. If your file uses a different separator (such as a tab), columns may not be detected correctly. Check your export settings before generating the import file.

Not checking the import summary

Flexmail shows a summary at the end of every import with the number of contacts added, updated, skipped, and blacklisted. Reviewing this summary immediately after import is the fastest way to catch problems before contacts are sent to.

Saving the CSV with incorrect encoding

If contacts import successfully but names or field values contain garbled text such as accented characters replaced by question marks or random symbols, the CSV was saved with the wrong character encoding. Always export your contact file as UTF-8. In Excel, use "Save As" and choose "CSV UTF-8 (with BOM)" from the file type dropdown.

Next steps

• See "Import errors" for help with imports that fail with a specific error message.
• See "Link database fields with the import file" for a full explanation of the column mapping step.
• See "Contact fields" to create and configure custom fields before your next import.
• See "Add contacts" for a complete walkthrough of the import process.