Blank rows in a product CSV: find and remove

Scrolling through your product file, you find rows with nothing in them, in the middle of the list or at the very bottom. The row count is higher than your real number of products. Uploading such a file may produce warnings about missing values, or empty entries.

Why it happens. Content was deleted in a spreadsheet, but the rows themselves stayed. An export left empty rows behind. Two files were joined, and empty rows sit at the end of the joined file.

This post covers rows where every cell is empty. A single empty cell is a different problem; see the post "Empty cells in your product CSV: why and how to fix". So is a line break inside a cell; see "Line breaks inside a CSV cell: fix split rows".

Find them by hand (start here). 1. Make a backup copy first. Copy the original file and give the copy a new name, such as products-backup. Do all the work in the original file and keep the backup copy untouched. 2. Note the current number of data rows. Write it down as "rows before". 3. Turn on filtering for the header row. 4. On a column that should always have a value, such as SKU or product name, filter to show only blank cells. 5. Look at each row that appears. A row is safe to delete only if every cell in it is empty. If a row has other data and only that one cell is empty, keep it. That is a missing value to fill in, not a blank row. 6. Optional second method: sort the table by that same column. Blank rows usually gather at the top or bottom. Sorting changes the row order, so do this only in the original file, and only after the backup copy exists.

Fix. 1. Select the fully blank rows that the filter shows. 2. Delete the rows themselves. Do not just clear their contents, because cleared rows are still blank rows. 3. Remove the filter so all remaining rows show. 4. Save the file as CSV.

Check again. 1. Count the data rows. The number should equal "rows before" minus the rows you deleted. 2. Apply the blank filter again. No fully empty row should appear. 3. Go to the last row of the file and confirm it holds a real product. 4. Optional: open the saved CSV in a plain text editor. A blank row shows up as an empty line, or as a line made only of commas. There should be none. 5. If something looks wrong, restore the original file from the backup copy and repeat the steps.

The free CSV check skips blank rows and does not report them as a problem. It still counts them, so its row numbers line up with your file: row 1 is the first product row, and the header is not counted. Because blank rows are not flagged, find them with the steps above. After that, you can run the free check for the other problems it looks at, and treat its result as an extra look, not as proof that your file is clean.