# Bulk Invite error due to unknown UTF-8 character
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559
**Category:** Bug
**Created:** [October 14, 2016, 5:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559 "2016-10-14T17:19:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@VNVJeep](https://meta.discourse.org/u/VNVJeep)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2016, 5:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/1 "2016-10-14T17:19:59Z")
We’re a cloud client, and was hoping to go live today. I got my .csv together with about 520 unique email addresses, and uploaded it. It said the upload was successful and that I would be getting notifications about it’s status.
Well. That never happened. Nothing happened. About 20 minutes later, I tried it again. Still, nothing. There is no indication it was doing anything… nothing in the logs… no notifications… no new user. About 1 hour into it, I tried again… this time, it looked like 40 user invites went out. Mind you, this is still the same .csv file.
Where are the other 480? Am I doing something wrong? Should I be getting notifications? Should I be seeing 520 invites sitting in the queue?
I emailed support a couple of times this morning, and have not heard anything back yet. Not sure if it’s because of a Eastcoast/Westcoast thing… but I really need an assist here please. I checked meta, and did not find anything where I could try to assist myself on this. I mean, it’s a 1 column .csv file… nothing even remotely complex. Our members are expecting this to happen today. Please help. 😕
Thank you!
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### Author:  [@VNVJeep](https://meta.discourse.org/u/VNVJeep)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2016, 8:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/2 "2016-10-14T20:42:28Z")
Due to the time contraint, and not hearing from support on this today, I ended up doing most of them manually… one by one. Every once in a while, I would get fed up and go cross-eyed, and I would try to send the remaining addresses through in .csv format… and at times, a small chunk would make it through, and get stuck again.
Overall, this was a very frustrating process. I thought this would have been the easiest part. ☹
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2016, 4:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/3 "2016-10-15T04:45:24Z")
I am not sure, can you send the file to @techapj?
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### Author:  [@techAPJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/techAPJ)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2016, 5:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/4 "2016-10-15T05:09:51Z")
Apologies for delay in reply @VNVJeep! I just sent you a PM, will follow up in that thread.
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### Author:  [@VNVJeep](https://meta.discourse.org/u/VNVJeep)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2016, 1:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/5 "2016-10-15T13:31:00Z")
I sent the .csv in an email earlier yesterday when I emailed support… you guys should have it. Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll have to do this again in the near future, but something that should definitely be looked at as a possible bug?
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### Author:  [@techAPJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/techAPJ)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2016, 2:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/6 "2016-10-15T14:17:48Z")
I looked into the CSV file and found out that the bulk invite job was failing because of “invalid byte sequence in UTF-8”.
On line number 48 there was an email like “email@example.com�” – this email was raising the exception in bulk invite job and the process was failing.
This is definitely a bug. I will add the code to handle such cases and notify the error in detail via PM. ✏
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### Author:  [@techAPJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/techAPJ)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2016, 7:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/7 "2016-10-17T19:15:45Z")
> [@techAPJ](#):
>
> I will add the code to handle such cases and notify the error in detail via PM.
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/e5a13b0ac1eca6aab6548347308d2f611e3ab3fd](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/e5a13b0ac1eca6aab6548347308d2f611e3ab3fd)
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### Author:  [@VNVJeep](https://meta.discourse.org/u/VNVJeep)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2016, 7:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/8 "2016-10-17T19:53:22Z")
Excellent! Thank you very much, Arpit!
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2016, 11:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-invite-error-due-to-unknown-utf-8-character/51559/9 "2016-10-17T23:33:22Z")