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Summary

Learn how MindBridge defines "abnormally large cells" and how to fix them.

Symptom

During Data Validation, MindBridge lets you know that it has detected abnormally large cells within the data.

Resolution

Although abnormally large cells, in terms of number of characters (string length) or numeric size (very large numbers in the positive or negative direction) do not necessarily indicate a problem per se, they are often symptoms of other problems that would prevent proper ingestion:

• Bad data: If certain amounts in the Amount, Debit, or Credit columns are far out of the expected range, it is possible that these amounts are incorrect. This can happen if extra digits were added to the number or . (period) and , (comma) characters were interchanged. In most cases, you would likely need to bring up these amounts with your client and request better data.

• Multiple lines joined into one cell or row: Sometimes multiple lines end up in one cell in an Excel file if carriage return instead of newline characters were used to separate lines. If "" (double quotation marks) characters surround a block of multiple lines in a CSV or delimited text file, the multiple lines will be read as one large cell of data (see Improper escaping below)

• Improper escaping: If certain special characters, such as " \ ' and the file's delimiter character (for example, , (comma) for CSV files), are present in field values, they must be escaped in order to preserve the integrity of the data, or else the system will not be able to properly read where columns begin and end.

• Improper escaping can make MindBridge think that a cell is much longer than it is; when there is one single " character in a row, the system thinks that the cell does not end until it sees another ", which could be many rows down.

  • This is a common cause of the following error on ingestion: MBER1332 - Encountered single record with more lines than the specified upper limit of 100.