CSV new-line character seen in unquoted field error

Question

the following code worked until today when I imported from a Windows machine and got this error:

new-line character seen in unquoted field - do you need to o

Answer 1

I realize this is an old post, but I ran into the same problem and don't see the correct answer so I will give it a try

Python Error:

_csv.Error: new-line character seen in unquoted field

Caused by trying to read Macintosh (pre OS X formatted) CSV files. These are text files that use CR for end of line. If using MS Office make sure you select either plain CSV format or CSV (MS-DOS). Do not use CSV (Macintosh) as save-as type.

My preferred EOL version would be LF (Unix/Linux/Apple), but I don't think MS Office provides the option to save in this format.

Answer 2

If this happens to you on mac (as it did to me):

1. Save the file as CSV (MS-DOS Comma-Separated)

2. Run the following script

   with open(csv_filename, 'rU') as csvfile:
       csvreader = csv.reader(csvfile)
       for row in csvreader:
           print ', '.join(row)
   

Answer 3

It'll be good to see the csv file itself, but this might work for you, give it a try, replace:

file_read = csv.reader(self.file)

with:

file_read = csv.reader(self.file, dialect=csv.excel_tab)

Or, open a file with universal newline mode and pass it to csv.reader, like:

reader = csv.reader(open(self.file, 'rU'), dialect=csv.excel_tab)

Or, use splitlines(), like this:

def read_file(self):
    with open(self.file, 'r') as f:
        data = [row for row in csv.reader(f.read().splitlines())]
    return data

Answer 4

Try to run dos2unix on your windows imported files first

Answer 5

This worked for me on OSX.

# allow variable to opened as files
from io import StringIO

# library to map other strange (accented) characters back into UTF-8
from unidecode import unidecode

# cleanse input file with Windows formating to plain UTF-8 string
with open(filename, 'rb') as fID:
    uncleansedBytes = fID.read()
    # decode the file using the correct encoding scheme
    # (probably this old windows one) 
    uncleansedText = uncleansedBytes.decode('Windows-1252')

    # replace carriage-returns with new-lines
    cleansedText = uncleansedText.replace('\r', '\n')

    # map any other non UTF-8 characters into UTF-8
    asciiText = unidecode(cleansedText)

# read each line of the csv file and store as an array of dicts, 
# use first line as field names for each dict. 
reader = csv.DictReader(StringIO(cleansedText))
for line_entry in reader:
    # do something with your read data 

Answer 6

Alternative and fast solution : I faced the same error. I reopened the "wierd" csv file in GNUMERIC on my lubuntu machine and exported the file as csv file. This corrected the issue.