Facebook Catalog Feed Errors, Fixed

Where to find feed errors

In Commerce Manager, open your catalog and go to its data sources to see the latest upload for each Meta Commerce Manager data feed, with errors and warnings. The catalog's issues view also lists items that were rejected or have problems, with the field involved. Errors stop an item from being added or updated; warnings don't, but they can limit where the item appears.

Missing required fields

Every product needs id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, image_link, and brand. If a column is missing from your Facebook catalog CSV or a value is blank, that item fails. Add the column or value, or remove the item. Brand is the one most often left out - use your own brand for products you make.

Values in the wrong format

• Price must be a number, a space, and a three-letter ISO 4217 currency code, with a period as the decimal point: 9.99 USD - not $9.99 or 9,99.
• Availability must be exactly in stock or out of stock - not "InStock" or "available".
• Condition must be new, refurbished, or used.
• Sale price uses the same format as price and must be lower than it.
• Gender must be female, male, or unisex; age_group one of adult, all ages, teen, kids, toddler, infant, or newborn.

Text that's too long or has HTML

Titles can be up to 200 characters (Meta recommends about 65 so they aren't cut off), descriptions up to 9,999 characters, and IDs and brands up to 100. Descriptions must be plain text - strip out HTML tags.

Image errors

• Image too small: images must be JPEG or PNG, at least 500 x 500 pixels, and no larger than 8 MB.
• Image can't be downloaded: open the image_link in a browser. It must load directly - not a redirect to a login page or an error - and your website shouldn't block Meta's crawler.
• Image won't update: if you replace a product image, give the new image a new URL. Meta won't pick up a changed file at the same URL.

Duplicate IDs and broken links

• Duplicate IDs: every id may appear only once in a catalog. Two products sharing an ID means one overwrites the other.
• Invalid links: each link must start with http:// or https:// and open the product's own page on your website.

Feed can't be fetched

For a scheduled feed, a failed fetch is usually one of these:

• The URL points to a web page instead of the file itself.
• The username or password saved in Commerce Manager doesn't match the protected feed.
• The file is too big - the maximum is 8 GB, and Meta suggests splitting feeds with more than a million items.
• The file isn't a supported format (CSV, TSV, XLSX, XML, or Google Sheets) or has the wrong delimiter.

Scheduled Data Feeds in Commerce Manager covers setting a feed up correctly, and the pillar guide, How to Create a Facebook Catalog Without Shopify, covers every way to add products.

Prevent errors before they happen

1. Start from a correct header row - our free Facebook Catalog CSV Template Generator gets every column name and required field right.
2. Check your file before uploading - our free Product Catalog CSV Validator catches missing and invalid Facebook catalog fields.
3. Run through the free Facebook Product Catalog Checklist before your first upload.
4. Generate your feed from your real product data instead of retyping it.
5. Use a scheduled feed so fixes reach Facebook on the next fetch automatically.