What does this mean in Magmi "wrong column number : 20 found over 38, line skipped"

Question

I am trying to import this csv using magmi "wrong column number : 20 found over 38, line skipped". What does this mean?

sku,name,description,short_description,price,qty,is_in_stock,visibility,image,small_image,thumbnail,weight,media_gallery,categories,tax_class_id,status,page_layout,options_container,Size:dropdown:1

"FA0120","Silver Service White Gloves",".","Gloves 100% Cotton. One size. Please scroll down to add to your basket.","7.01","0","0","Catalog, Search","/FA0120L.jpg","/FA0120L.jpg","/FA0120L.jpg","1000",,"","Vat Standard","Enabled","1 column","Product Info Column","One Size"

Answer 1

this error message means:

you have a csv header with 38 columns declared in some line you have only 20 columns (ie no more separators found after 20 values)

say you have this kind of file

header1,header2,header3,header4
somehere,somethere

When reading first data line It would say, wrong column number 2 found over 4 since your CSV is malformed. It should have been

header1,header2,header3,header4
somehere,somethere,,

With explicit empty values for existing columns

Hopefully, magmi is able to read those "partial" files too, open the CSV datasource plugin panel & check the "Allow truncated lines" box.

This is very bad practice not to fill CSV files correctly. since you do some "errors", taking a column for another (any automated CSV export would respect number of columns, i suppose your file was created from manual edit or too lazy script)

Answer 2

I've had similar problems importing products using the default Magento import method. I used the XML import though, as I read that CSV has problems with some characters. So that might be the first place to start!

Remove pieces of that import string, first the values inbetween the double quotes, one by one, or replace them with something you typed. When the import works with removed value X, then simply type the value over, and see if that solves your problem.

If that doesn't work, I would replace all double quotes in my text editor, and even the commas. The code you paste here can be changed in such a way that I cannot see the problem anymore.

It could be something else, but this might be a good start.