# Uploading Watched Words is not working?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** watched-words
**Created:** [March 5, 2020, 6:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635 "2020-03-05T18:59:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@outofthebox](https://meta.discourse.org/u/outofthebox)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2020, 6:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/1 "2020-03-05T18:59:57Z")
Hi, what file type should be used to upload words from a file? “Add from file”
---
### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2020, 7:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/2 "2020-03-05T19:23:30Z")
> [@outofthebox](#):
>
> what file type should be used to upload words from a file?
The upload input on the watched words page is looking for a `.txt` file. That file should contain one word per line.
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### Author:  [@outofthebox](https://meta.discourse.org/u/outofthebox)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2020, 8:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/3 "2020-03-05T20:09:38Z")
Thanks! I’ve now uploaded my .txt file. I get a message that says, “Upload successful. Words have been added.”
However, no words then appear to be added.
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2020, 8:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/4 "2020-03-05T20:12:29Z")
> [@outofthebox](#):
>
> no words then appear to be added.
Is the ‘show words’ checkbox checked? Words will only be shown when that box is checked.
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### Author:  [@outofthebox](https://meta.discourse.org/u/outofthebox)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2020, 8:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/5 "2020-03-05T20:24:05Z")
Hi, yes. And when it isn’t checked, it shows the “0 words” text.
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2020, 10:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/6 "2020-03-05T22:16:54Z")
> [@outofthebox](#):
>
> And when it isn’t checked, it shows the “0 words” text.
Which action are you trying to upload the words to? One thing to note is that you cannot add the same word to multiple watched word actions.
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### Author:  [@outofthebox](https://meta.discourse.org/u/outofthebox)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2020, 6:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/7 "2020-03-06T18:38:23Z")
Hi, so I took the risk of deleting my watched words section, then attempting to upload the .txt file to the blocked words section. Unfortunately, it is still not loading the new word list from the document.
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### Author:  [@justin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/justin)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2020, 9:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/8 "2020-03-08T21:14:58Z")
Do you see any errors in the browser console or `/logs`?
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### Author:  [@aaron.dryden](https://meta.discourse.org/u/aaron.dryden)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 10:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/9 "2023-01-11T10:55:20Z")
Having the same problem and can’t see any solutions on here - did you crack it @outofthebox ?
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 11:18am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/10 "2023-01-11T11:18:27Z")
I’ve just given it a run-through on my test site with a 3 word csv file added to ‘Block’ and it has worked for me?
Could you give a few more details of what you’re trying and what’s going wrong?
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### Author:  [@outofthebox](https://meta.discourse.org/u/outofthebox)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 12:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/11 "2023-01-11T12:03:53Z")
Hi Aaron, I wish I could help, but I don’t remember how that worked out!
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### Author:  [@aaron.dryden](https://meta.discourse.org/u/aaron.dryden)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 12:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/12 "2023-01-11T12:25:23Z")
> [@outofthebox](#):
>
> Thanks! I’ve now uploaded my .txt file. I get a message that says, “Upload successful. Words have been added.”
>
> However, no words then appear to be added.
Exactly the same as the OP, thanks @JammyDodger
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### Author:  [@aaron.dryden](https://meta.discourse.org/u/aaron.dryden)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 12:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/13 "2023-01-11T12:26:13Z")
Thanks @outofthebox, it was a while back so understandable!
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 1:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/14 "2023-01-11T13:40:37Z")
I’ve just given it a go with a `.txt` file rather than a `csv` and that did work for two of the three words, but not the third as I had forgotten to add the comma at the end. 🙂 Does your word list have commas in, or just a list of words?
eg.
```plaintext
dog,
cat,
pancake,
```
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### Author:  [@aaron.dryden](https://meta.discourse.org/u/aaron.dryden)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 3:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/15 "2023-01-11T15:26:53Z")
Thanks so much @JammyDodger - I managed to get it working by adding the commas, but made one small tweak to the text and it won’t work again. Finding this function really inconsistent 😫
Working with 75 words or phrases so it’s a few too many to do manually
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 3:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/16 "2023-01-11T15:47:15Z")
I think you can break them up and do them in smaller batches, which may help you find the one that’s giving you trouble. 🙂 🤞
I also find typing them into a spreadsheet (with no commas) and exporting that as a csv to be a pretty smooth way of adding bigger lists if you ever need to do a bigger one. 🙂
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### Author:  [@aaron.dryden](https://meta.discourse.org/u/aaron.dryden)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2023, 7:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/17 "2023-01-11T19:07:11Z")
Thanks for your suggestions @JammyDodger , I’m repeating the same task with the same files and sometimes getting no words added, sometimes one, sometimes three!
Will pick it up again tomorrow when Discourse may be feeling differently! Appreciate your help though 🙏🏼
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### Author:  [@abrambailey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/abrambailey)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2024, 4:07am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/18 "2024-12-03T04:07:00Z")
In my case there was a special character being used by excel’s csv which was breaking it. I had to edit the csv in my text editor to fix it. However, there is another issue, which is that if you try to upload a list to the “Replace” tab, there seems to be no way of indicating in the csv that the output should be in HTML. The download also doesn’t provide any flag to indicate html or not.
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### Author:  [@abrambailey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/abrambailey)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2024, 4:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/19 "2024-12-03T04:13:57Z")
One other interesting issue I have. I’m inserting links after product names like this:
And sometimes people do stuff like “AirPods Pro 2’s” and I’ve tried matching on the apostrophized version first to avoid having the link icon followed by `'s` but it seems it doesn’t matter the order of the watched words, the text is always broken up.
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### Author:  [@abrambailey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/abrambailey)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2024, 2:29am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uploading-watched-words-is-not-working/143635/20 "2024-12-05T02:29:35Z")
Noticed that Watched Words also manipulates text in the post preview. Is there any way to suppress this?