Why Is My Meta Catalog Data Feed Failing?

A feed problem has two levels. Some errors stop the whole file from uploading. Others let the file through but keep certain products out of your ads and shop. Meta says a feed that is missing required data or formatted wrongly can leave products un-updated, hidden from ads, or the file failing outright. Start by finding which level you are dealing with.

What stops a whole feed from uploading?

Cause	How to check	Fix
File has no products	Open the file	Add products and upload again
Meta can’t reach the file	Open the feed URL in your browser	Use a link to the file itself, starting http://, https://, ftp:// or sftp://
Server or robots.txt blocks Meta	Check server logs and robots.txt	Allow the user agent facebookexternalhit/1.1
Login details wrong	“HTTP authentication failed” error	Correct them, or remove them if the file isn’t password protected
Unsupported format	File type	Use XLSX, CSV, TSV, XML (RSS/Atom) or Google Sheets
Columns don’t line up	Count fields per row against the header	Remove unused fields; quote CSV fields that contain commas
File too large or slow	File size	Stay under 100 MB for one-time uploads or 4 GB for scheduled ones

For Google Sheets, Meta says sharing must be set to anyone with the link, not restricted. For files over 1 GB, it recommends compressing to ZIP or GZIP or splitting products into several feeds.

How do you find the errors?

Go to Commerce Manager and select your catalog.
Open the Catalog tab and go to Data sources; the Last update column shows each file’s latest upload time.
Click your feed to see the last upload session and its issues.
Click Download issue report for a sample of the problems.
Fix the errors in your file, following Meta’s product data specifications.
Re-upload from the feed’s Settings tab, or re-save the file where a scheduled upload will fetch it.

The issue report may be unavailable if the upload was too long ago or the file has more than 100,000 errors. Meta suggests uploading again, or splitting the feed into smaller ones.

Why was my scheduled feed paused?

Meta says a scheduled feed that fails to upload several times may be paused. After fixing the cause, go to the feed’s Settings tab, find Schedules and click Resume.

Which product-level errors does Meta flag?

Out of stock or archived: neither appears in ads.
Description in all capitals: use sentence case, or a capitalization rule.
Unsupported category: use a valid google_product_category or fb_product_category.
Content ID reused as a group ID: every ID and group ID must be unique, and IDs are case sensitive.
No brand, GTIN or MPN: provide at least one; GTINs must be UPC, EAN, JAN, ISBN or ITF-14.
Missing or broken link: links must start with http:// or https://.
Bad price: a number, a space and a 3-letter ISO 4217 code, with a period as the decimal point.

FAQ

Does HTML in my description cause errors?

It can. Meta says HTML is only supported in the rich_text_description field, which works in shops but not in ads. Supported tags there are p, b, i, ul and li, and tag attributes such as style are removed. Keep the main description plain text.

My file opens fine for me. Why can’t Meta fetch it?

Meta lists several reasons: the link points to a web page instead of the file, the server returns an error such as 503 or 404, your server or hosting site blocks Meta’s requests, or robots.txt disallows facebookexternalhit. Ask your developer to check the server logs.

For API uploads, what header causes errors?

Meta says to set the character encoding to UTF-8 in the Content-Type section of the HTTP header. A common mistake, it notes, is putting it in the Content-Encoding section instead.