Fix Salesforce Data Loader CSV Encoding Errors

What the error actually means

Salesforce documents UTF-8 as the required encoding for Data Loader CSV files. It also documents that Data Loader version 28 and later can reject UTF-8 files containing a byte-order mark. A file can therefore contain valid UTF-8 text and still fail because of the leading BOM bytes.

Likely causes

• The export is Windows-1252, Latin-1 or another legacy encoding.
• The file was saved as UTF-8 with BOM rather than plain UTF-8.
• A spreadsheet altered characters during a save cycle.
• The visible error is structural or field-specific rather than an encoding failure.

A safe repair workflow

1. 1Preserve the original and convert a copy to UTF-8.
2. 2Export without a BOM when using a Data Loader version covered by Salesforce’s documented BOM restriction.
3. 3Confirm special characters in known contacts before importing.
4. 4Run a five-row Data Loader test and examine both the success and error files.

How to verify the result

A file that downloads successfully is not automatically a correct file. Check the result at both the structural and business-data levels:

• The first header contains no hidden BOM character.
• Names containing accents survive the round trip.
• Data Loader recognizes every intended header.
• The result file accounts for every submitted row.