# Ignore BOM on CSV when sending bulk invitations
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/ignore-bom-on-csv-when-sending-bulk-invitations/62332
**Category:** Bug
**Created:** [9 Mayo, 2017 04:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ignore-bom-on-csv-when-sending-bulk-invitations/62332 "2017-05-09T04:30:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@barryvan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/barryvan)
#### Post date: [9 Mayo, 2017 04:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ignore-bom-on-csv-when-sending-bulk-invitations/62332/1 "2017-05-09T04:30:40Z")
When creating a CSV in Excel, it by default includes (what I think is) a BOM marker at the top of the file, to ensure that it’s parsed as UTF-8. Unfortunately Discourse doesn’t handle this (and doesn’t read the file as UTF-8!) so the first email address always fails with an error like this:
(Note that the “j” is the first letter of the actual email address.)
I think Discourse should strip/ignore the BOM on CSVs – it’s probably pretty common that people would put these together in Excel, after all. 😉
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [9 Mayo, 2017 06:03 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ignore-bom-on-csv-when-sending-bulk-invitations/62332/2 "2017-05-09T06:03:01Z")
That might make sense @techapj I can confirm via hex editor, when Excel 2016 file is saved as CSV
```
a,b,c,d
e,f,g,h
```
there is the BOM marker by default:
> **[Byte order mark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark)**
>
> The byte-order mark (BOM) is a particular usage of the special Unicode character code, .mw-parser-output .monospaced{font-family:monospace,monospace}U+FEFF ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE, whose appearance as a magic number at the start of a text stream can signal several things to a program reading the text:
> BOM use is optional. Its presence interferes with the use of UTF-8 by software that does not expect non-ASCII bytes at the start of a file but that could otherwise handle the text stream.
> Uni...
`UTF-8 EF BB BF`
---
### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [9 Mayo, 2017 06:28 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ignore-bom-on-csv-when-sending-bulk-invitations/62332/3 "2017-05-09T06:28:34Z")
I went to review the W3C page to double check my understanding that the BOMs were only needed for UTF-16 and UTF-32 because UTF-8 did not have big / little endian.
With HTML5 things have changed a bit since I last visited the page.
Older browsers could use …BE and …LE HTTP headers but now the only way is by reading the BOM
tl;dr for UTF-8 yes strip the BOM
> **[The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML](https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-byte-order-mark)**
>
> What is the byte-order mark, and what do I need to know about it when creating HTML?
---
### Author:  [@techAPJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/techAPJ)
#### Post date: [9 Mayo, 2017 17:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ignore-bom-on-csv-when-sending-bulk-invitations/62332/4 "2017-05-09T17:19:59Z")
Fixed via:
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/e6e00253267008b17c760befbd852b5fdf998060](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/e6e00253267008b17c760befbd852b5fdf998060)
---
### Author:  [@techAPJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/techAPJ)
#### Post date: [9 Mayo, 2017 17:27 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ignore-bom-on-csv-when-sending-bulk-invitations/62332/5 "2017-05-09T17:27:56Z")