ACS: Random characters appear in column definitions on file upload
Explore how to solve the Adobe Campaign Standard issue where extra characters appear with the email header.
Description description
Environment
- Adobe Campaign Standard
- Production and Stage environments
Issue/Symptoms
When a file is uploaded on the Load File activity, when you refresh to detect a new column, extra characters appear with the “Email” header.
This can also be seen in Column Definition.
The ID will result with an i_Email instead of Email.
Steps to reproduce the issue:
- Use a workflow
>Load activity.
Have a CSV file with at least one column with a header (example: “Email”) - Select the file within the Load activity to import the file.
- Go to the File Structure tab after a successful import.
Expected Results:
No extra characters appear with the “Email” header.
Column Definition is normal.
The ID results with “Email”.
Actual Results:
Extra characters appear with the “Email” header.
This can also be seen in Column Definition.
The ID results with “i_Email” instead of “Email”.
Cause
The issue is related to the file encoding. When files are saved with the UTF-8-BOM encoding, the BOM characters (EF BB BF) are added at the beginning of the file.
Resolution resolution
To change the file encoding format, try the following workaround:
-
Open a ticket with Adobe support and the Adobe infrastructure team can run the below command in the serverConfig.xml campaign configuration file to remove the (UTF-8 BOM) from (UTF-8) encoded files:
\<postProcessCommand command="sed -i "1 s/\xef\xbb\xbf//" "$fileName"" name="cust_nobom" suffix="" label="(Custom) NOBOM File"/> -
Adobe support will contact you and confirm that the UTF-8 BOM file has been removed.
Follow the below steps to validate the above changes:
Note: Implement the below change in stage first and then the production server. Restart workflows if necessary.
- Navigate to the Extract file configuration settings.
- Select or add a post-processing step labeled as NO BOM file, which ensures that any BOM present is removed from the output files.
- Execute the affected workflows and check output files using text editors like Notepad++ or other tools capable of displaying encoding details.
- Confirm that exported files adhere strictly to UTF-8 without any additional BOM characters.
By following these steps, you should be able to ensure compatibility with systems requiring specific file encodings while maintaining smooth operations across different environments within Adobe Campaign Standard.