Russian Characters import

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Does Marketo list import accept Russian language characters?

Thanks.

[SanfordWhiteman]

To clarify some of the back-and-forth:

• "Unicode Text" in an export dropdown is usually a confusing shorthand for UTF-16 (or in some old software, UCS-2) encoding
• "UTF-8" means, well, UTF-8 encoding

Neither one is "Unicode" (since Unicode is an abstraction more than a data format).  So if the software you're using is giving you the literal choice of "UTF-16," that's your choice.  It may be that your app is only capable of outputting UTF-8, in which case you're going to need to convert it somehow.

[Dan_Stevens_]

In our case - where we've successfully always saved out as "unicode text" - we use Excel.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Excel "Unicode Text" == UTF16 Little Endian with BOM.

Other software might generate UTF16 Little Endian without BOM, for example.  But the assumed endianness without BOM is Big Endian (speaking generically) so unless Marketo's side always parses as LE, that would be a problem.

It can get very complex, esp. when people have custom export software that could be written in any language.  It's good to know that Excel consistently works for you -- anybody with the opportunity to "massage" with Excel should follow your example.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Sanford, I was getting a little confused.

I have now managed to import my leads using the Unicode option.

Thanks very much everyone, it was my first question to the Marketo Community and your help has made it a good experience 

[Dan_Stevens_]

Anytime you work with a list with special characters like this, always export as "Unicode Text File".  Then during the import process, be sure to select "tab-delimited".  As long as you remember those two points, the data should import successfully into Marketo.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dan

I want to know reason why the user have to select "tab-delimied".

In my similar case, marketo support recommend me "comma-delimita".

[Dan_Stevens_]

A Unicode text file contains values separated by tabs, not commas.  Comma separated only works with CSV files. Perhaps they're referring to the more complex process that Josh referenced above - saving the file with UTF-8 encoding, manually entering the commas (using find/replace) and then saving the file as a CSV. But that process/effort isn't required. Just use what I explained and you'll be fine. We'be been importing list of names from Europe and APAC for years using this method, with no issues at all. ​

[Anonymous]

Thank you Dan and Josh!

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I saved as a tab delimited file in UTF8 format.

Still no luck importing Russian Characters, they appear on the import preview as "??????? ?????".

Please could you tell me how to find other threads about this, I have searched with no luck...

Thanks in advance.

[Dan_Stevens_]

You need to save/export as "Unicode Text" file (which will produce a .txt file) - not UTF8.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ruth

Dan's advice is unicode but not UTF8.

Could you try with unicode encoding?

[Josh_Hill13]

Yes. Use UTF8 for all imports. There are instructions in another thread.

I'm not so sure Marketo is good at displaying such characters, but it can use them.