The way that Excel opens files can sometimes mess with the data and change it. This is down to a problem with Excel, not with the GivePanel report builder. If you find the data in your Excel sheet has been changed e.g. certain characters look different or unusual characters have been added in that shouldn’t be there, we have a solution.
We are working on a more permanent fix, but in the meantime, this will resolve the problem. Make sure the file you want to tidy is stored in a location on your computer that you can access easily:
Open Excel and navigate to the 'Data' tab. Under "Get External Data," click on "From Text" and select the CSV file exported from GivePanel.
The wizard that appears allows you to specify the data type for each column. In this step, ensure you choose "text" for the Campaign ID column. This precaution ensures that you can edit the file in Excel without risking any inadvertent changes to the campaign IDs.
Facebook campaign IDs are often longer than 15 characters. If Excel is not configured to read them correctly, it may mishandle the IDs. Specifically, the issue can arise where Excel, if improperly configured, replaces the last character of the campaign ID with a 0, rendering it unusable.
We believe this is what happens by default if you open the Facebook transaction report CSV in Excel, and is one of the main benefits of using GivePanel and why we don't allow you to open Facebook transaction reports before you upload them into GivePanel.
All GivePanel data is provided in CSV at present. This is not a GivePanel issue.
There are a few solutions:
1. Use another spreadsheet software (Numbers on Mac does not have this issue, for example). However, we know this will be difficult for many of our clients who are on Windows-based work computers.
2. Configure Excel to read the Campaign ID column correctly.