Added books not showing up

I just uploaded some books as usual with a CSV file of ISBNs through the Universal Import function - this usuall works a treat, but this time although I got the notification email saying "Your import records have been added to your catalog", the books just don't show up on "Your Books". I checked the tag page and did several searches across all our collections, but nothing there...
Any idea what might have gone wrong?

Update - just tried again and seems like all the ISBNs from that upload were stuck in the lookup queue. Giving it another go...

It really does appear that nothing worked, as your most recent books were added on 2019-07-15. However, searches are not the best way to check, as books don't always show up in searches right away. Sorting by entry date will show whether or not the books are in your catalogue.

Our books are sorted by entry date, I did the tag page check and then searches as secondary means of checking. Just uploaded again and again i got a confirmation email that my import records were added, but again all 16 ISBNs are marked as "failed" in the lookup queue. However, if I enter one of the ISBNs in the "Add books" search box rather than try to batch upload through Universal Import with a csv file, LT finds the book immediately....

>4 HistoryattheBodleian: Are you using the same data source(s) on the Add Books page (under “Search where”) as you chose when running your import? I’ll have to check your import file to see if there’s anything obvious there.

I usually chose LoC, Oxford University and GBV - the lookup queue said "trying Library of Congress" for a while but then returned 16 failed ISBNs as before. On the "Add books" page the ISBNs are found in Oxford University without problems, so I tried putting Oxford University as "Try #1" for the next attempt but still nothing but failed ISBNs...

I am using the same format csv file as I have for the last nine months or so which always worked find before, so if you could have a check to see whether there is anything wrong with the file that would be great!

Related? http://www.librarything.com/topic/309396

Possibly, though of limited use to me since the books I am adding are all academic books, and at least half of them are in languages other than Englilsh, so not very many of them are actually listed on Amazon (which according to the thread was the only database that LT could access). Will try another upload with Amazon included in the sources to try, but that is not really a solition - if this has been happening on and off over the last ten days something seem seriously wrong with the database access...

I wasn't suggesting using Amazon, just pointing out that your problem seemed to be around the same time.

Okay, finally had a chance to look at your import file, and I see the problem. Your import file's columns do not exactly match those in the LibraryThing Sample file here: https://www.librarything.com/import (look toward the bottom of the green box on the right side of the page).

You've inserted a column for Entry Date (which is not an importable field—it will reflect the date the record was added to LibraryThing), and removed Date Read, Page Count, and Call Number.

Moreover, your "Review" column is populated by links to an outside catalog. The Review field is not an appropriate place to put just a link. It should contain your review of the book. I typically advise members that the Comments or Private comments fields are better places for links, though there is not a way to import either of those fields from a spreadsheet at this time.

The easiest way to get your books in is to use a spreadsheet with just a list of the ISBNs. All you have in your import file is the ISBN and those links in the Review column.

Our Universal Import feature is set up to copy-catalog records from your chosen data source if it finds an ISBN present. If there's an ISBN for a given row/record, it will copy-catalog based on the ISBN and skip over the other data (Reviews, in this case). If you'd like to use this option, cut out all the other columns from your import aside from ISBN, and try it again.

If you have other data you need to get into your catalog via import, your best bet is to: 1) Make your import file match the LibraryThing Sample file I mentioned above exactly. This means you cannot remove, add to, or rearrange the columns. Then, 2) Leave the ISBN column blank. You'll need to make sure to include a title and author at minimum, if you go this route.

I'm sorry for the trouble. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help. I'm leaving the bug report open for now, until we get a successful import for you, but I don't think there's a bug here.

Bumping http://www.librarything.com/topic/290292 - the import should check the headers immediately when the file is submitted, and give a useful error message right away. It wouldn't take long to just check the first line of the file, and it would prevent a lot of frustration and repeated bug reports.

Thanks for that, though I am puzzled - this is the CSV template spreadsheet I have been using since November last year, downloaded from LT. I have not changed any columns, and it has always worked before (as recently as two weeks ago). It seems to me it really can't be that, but no problem to use the new CSV file you must have changed recently.
I am also very well aware that the "Review" column is not the place for the outside catalogue link we like to add; but the sample file spreadsheet does not allow for any uploads of these link as comments; if you had taken the time to look at our shelf you would have seen that while I upload these links in the "Review" column, I then laboriously by hand cut and paste all of them into the "Comments" column once upload is complete. If you could enable a "Comments" column on the sample spreadsheet, that would make my life very much easier.
Uploading only the ISBNs is really not feasible, since to LT wraps the associated links I upload into several layers of HTML, and to add all of these manually would be far too time-consuming.
I have managed to upload part of last week's batch by following the tip of chosing Amazon as one of the sources, but as predicted this did not catch some of the more specialised academic books.
I will try again as normal for this week's batch and see what happens, but as I said, uploading the ISBNs and links in the "Review" column with the spreadsheet I had as worked without problems for the last 9 months and more until last week, so yes, this is definitelty a bug.

Searches for all uploaded ISBNs just failed again (LoC, Oxford U, GBV) despite using the newly downloaded up-to-date template csv.

Re-uploaded and included Amazon as one of the sources to try; this caught most of them but 5 failed ISBNs still in the queue - and since the previously failed ones were in there for 4 days I don't really believe the "Finishing estimate: between 10 minutes and 20 minutes."

All 5 failed ISBNs were found immediately in Oxford University when I added them manually one by one on the Add Books tab rather than upload them as a batch.

Definitely a bug.

>14 HistoryattheBodleian: (and >15 HistoryattheBodleian:) Thanks for the details. I'll have to do some testing with your import file on this end. I'd sure like to see the ability to import Comments, as well!

lorannen (#16):

I'd sure like to see the ability to import Comments, as well!

That is *so* far down the list of things I'd want to be able to import! I'd start with "Be able to import both title in exactly the form I have it and ISBN" which is currently not possible, but as you well know I think the whole import system needs to be fixed, not just have a few scattered fields added piecemeal.

lorannen (#16): Thank you!