Tips for Identifying Bad Data – Accidentally Importing Records with the Unicode Replacement Character

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

The Unicode replacement character � (often a black diamond with a question mark in it) will often appear when imported data is invalid.

Here is a smart list you can setup and subscribe to be alerted of an issue with a list import.

In this example, I created the smart list in my master data management program.

Smart List - Unicode Replacement Character- List Import (Created in past 24 hours): Set the subscription to this list.

In this case I sent the date of activity for the past 24 hours but you can customize the time frame.

Set Subscription

Now you can trouble shoot issues more quickly.

Additional Resources

• Instructions for importing records with Unicode data into Marketo. Here is some test data if you want to try out the instructions.

Email Address	Company Name	First Name
testrecord01@record.com	Chinese	(中文
testrecord02@record.com	Japanese	日本語
testrecord03@record.com	Korean	한국어
testrecord05@record.com	German	ä ö ü
testrecord06@record.com	Spanish	á é í ó ú
testrecord07@record.com	Swedish/Finnish	Å å Ä ä Ö ö
testrecord08@record.com	Danish/Norwegian	Å å Æ æ Ø ø
testrecord09@record.com	French	À à Â â Ä ä È è Ô ô

Here is a recent thread about Unicode issues in Marketo. There are other ways to import Unicode as stated in this thread.

Here is a wiki article if you are interested in learning more about the replacement character.