Importing from Excel

Error message saying that “Field ‘F4’ doesn’t exist…”, or similar

 

This error, or one with a different ‘Field’ number is almost always caused by ‘ghost’ data in the Excel worksheet.  Often this arises where data has been input in columns beyond the ones that should have data, and has then been deleted.  For some unknown reason Excel has formatted, or left invisible data.  To confirm this, pressing Ctrl+End (at the same time) moves the cursor to the bottom right cell of the ‘active’ range.

To solve this problem, either

• Delete all columns beyond valid data, as far right as the Ctrl+End column. Highlight the column headers and click the “Cells > Delete Sheet Columns” button. Don’t just click <Delete>.

or

• Copy and paste just the data cells into a new Workbook.

A similar error message will be shown if any column header names are incorrect.  For example, this error is displayed if the UserID column header is changed to ‘UserName’

The column names must be exact.

The key to a successful import is a correctly formatted spreadsheet with no extraneous data (either visible or invisible!)