RowCheckeBay BAF.Error.4 (Unparseable Line): what it means and how to fix it
BAF.Error.4 is the error eBay's bulk upload (Seller Hub Reports, formerly File Exchange) reports as an unparseable line: eBay couldn't split that row of your CSV into the columns it expects, so it skips it. Sellers on the eBay Community forums trace it back to a handful of causes.
1. Line breaks inside the description
The most common one. If your item description (often HTML) contains hard returns, the row is broken across several lines and eBay reads each piece as a separate, unreadable row. Put the whole description on one line: remove the line breaks, or wrap the field in double quotes so the line breaks stay inside it.
2. Missing or extra quotes
A description or title that contains a comma or a double quote must be wrapped in double quotes, and any double quote
inside it must be doubled (""). One unbalanced quote makes the rest of the line, or the rest of the file,
unreadable.
3. A damaged or missing header
If the header row was edited, retyped or partly deleted, every row after it can fail. Start again from a fresh template downloaded from Seller Hub and paste your data in.
4. Line endings and odd characters from the editor
Saving from some editors or converting between Mac and Windows can leave stray carriage returns or invisible characters. Save as CSV UTF-8 from Excel or Google Sheets, and open the file in a plain text editor to check the first lines look normal.
How to find the bad line
- eBay's upload results file lists the failed rows; open the matching line in a text editor rather than in Excel, which hides line breaks and quotes.
- Search the file for a lone
"and for descriptions that span several lines. - Test with a copy that has only the header and one row; add rows back until the error returns.