Short answer
Most failed or damaged Shopify imports come from a short list: prices with currency signs or commas, rows that lost their handle, two variants with identical options, option values with no option name, barcodes or SKUs a spreadsheet turned into scientific notation, image links Shopify cannot fetch, and columns shifted by a stray comma. The free Shopify product CSV checker on this site finds all of them in your browser before you upload.
Free tools for this
Prices, stock and TRUE or FALSE
Variant Price must be a plain number like 1299 or 1299.50. A value like ₹1,299 or Rs. 1299 fails, because of the symbol and the comma. Stock quantity must be a whole number, so 5.5 is rejected. Columns such as Published and Requires Shipping expect TRUE or FALSE, not yes, no or 1.
Handles and rows that belong together
The Handle is how Shopify groups rows into a product. The first row of a product carries the title, and later rows for its variants and extra images repeat only the handle. A blank handle leaves a row with nowhere to go. Rows for one product that are split apart by other products are easy to get wrong, so keep each product together.
Handles become the product's web address. Capital letters, spaces and symbols get changed by Shopify, which changes the address and can break links you already rank for.
Try it now: Shopify Product CSV Checker → · Barcode Generator and GTIN Checker →
Variants and options
Each variant needs its own combination of option values. Two rows that both say Size M are a duplicate and the import fails or merges them. If a variant has an Option1 Value, the product's first row needs the matching Option1 Name, such as Size or Colour.
Barcodes and SKUs a spreadsheet damaged
Open a CSV in a spreadsheet and long numbers can turn into 8.90123E+12 or lose their leading zero. Once saved, the real digits are gone. Re-export from the source and format the SKU and barcode columns as Text before you paste anything in.
Barcodes also have a check digit. A wrong one imports fine but Google Shopping rejects it later. Duplicate SKUs import too, and then break stock and order matching.
Image links
Image Src must be a full web address that starts with https:// and opens the image file directly. A path on your computer, a Google Drive or Dropbox sharing page, or an address with a space will fail. Shopify downloads each image from that link during the import.
Before the full import
Import a small batch of 5 to 10 products first and open them. Check the variants, prices, images and the web addresses. Then import the rest. Keep the original file untouched, and fix problems in a copy.