Troubleshoot import

When an import does not produce the expected result, the issue usually comes from formatting, matching, or column mapping.

Use this page when the import technically runs but the result is wrong, incomplete, or surprising. The import preview shown before execution catches many of these problems early - review it carefully before confirming.

If you need to restart from the full workflow, go back to Prepare your import file or Import a file.

Common problems

Problem	Likely cause	What to check
Preview looks broken	Wrong delimiter or encoding	Change delimiter or encoding in the setup step
Rows are skipped	Empty matching key values	Check the key column (Name or Boldo ID)
Assets are duplicated	Matching key values are not stable or unique	Recheck the key column values. Consider matching by Boldo ID for better reliability
Properties are empty	Wrong column mapping	Review column header mappings in the spreadsheet
List values are ignored	Values in the file do not match Boldo values	Review value mappings in the column header
Relationships are missing	Wrong relationship mapping or wrong separator	Review relationship mapping and per-column delimiter
Relationships are removed unexpectedly	Empty relation cells combined with the wrong missing-relations behavior	Check Missing relations and Empty values in the import settings
Name collision detected	Renaming an asset to a name already used	Fix the conflicting names in the file
Asset limit exceeded	Import would exceed the plan's asset quota	Remove rows or contact your administrator

If characters look corrupted

This applies to CSV files. Try another encoding, such as:

• UTF-8
• ISO-8859-1
• Windows-1252

XLSX files store encoding internally, so this issue does not apply.

If too many new assets are created

This usually means Boldo could not match rows to existing assets.

Check:

• the key column used for matching (Name or Boldo ID)
• the exact spelling of the Name values if matching by name
• whether names changed between imports

If names are not stable enough, switch to matching by Boldo ID. Export the current inventory to get a file with the Boldo ID column, then use that column as the matching key on re-import.

If list or yes/no values do not match

Review the manual mapping for:

• single-choice values
• multi-choice values
• yes/no values

The values in the file must be matched explicitly to the values defined in the metamodel.

If relationships are not created correctly

Check:

• the target relationship column
• the related asset names used in the cells
• the separator when several related assets are stored in one cell

If one cell contains several related values, use the expected separator consistently.

Also check the Missing relations setting:

• Keep missing relations preserves existing relations when the file leaves them out
• Remove missing relations removes existing relations that are not present in the file for that mapped relation column

How to debug

Check problems in this order:

1. file format (.csv or .xlsx)
2. key column values used for matching
3. column mapping in the spreadsheet headers
4. value mapping for lists and yes/no fields
5. relationship mapping and delimiters

If the result is still unclear:

1. stop the full import
2. reduce the file to a small sample
3. fix one issue at a time
4. rerun the sample import
5. only then rerun the full file

This is almost always faster than debugging a large broken import after the fact.