My file or photo import failed
What makes a spreadsheet or photo upload get rejected, the row and size limits, and how to tell the failures apart.
An import that doesn't work usually fails for a plain, fixable reason: the file is too big in one specific way. This page is the list of those ways.
"Analysis failed"
Three different problems all show the same Analysis failed badge, so the badge alone won't tell you which one you hit. The dialog text will — read it, because each one names the exact limit you crossed and what to remove.
| What it says | What it means |
|---|---|
| "Uploaded file exceeds maximum of 250 rows with data. Please remove unnecessary rows to proceed." | More than 250 rows. Split the file and import it in batches. |
| "Uploaded file exceeds maximum of 100 columns with data. Please remove unnecessary columns to proceed." | More than 100 columns. Delete the columns you don't need — Routerra only needs the address. |
| "Uploaded file contain rows that exceeds maximum 500 chars/row. Please cleanup data to proceed." | A row longer than 500 characters. Usually one runaway cell — a pasted paragraph in a notes column. |
File size limits
On the phone app there are two separate size limits, and they're reported differently:
- One file over 10 MB — "File size exceeds the maximum limit of 10MB. Please select a smaller file."
- Several files that add up to more than 25 MB — "Total size of all files exceeds the maximum limit of 25MB. Please select fewer or smaller files."
The second one catches people importing a batch of photos. Send them in two goes.
A photo that won't process
If the phone app can't read an image at all, it says Couldn't process this image and offers Retry on that image specifically — the rest of your batch is unaffected.
Retrying is worth doing once, because this failure is often about the image file itself rather than what's in it. If it keeps failing, take the photo again rather than resending the same file: good light, the page flat, the whole list in frame.
Wrong format
File import accepts XLS, XLSX and CSV. Anything else — a PDF manifest, a Numbers or Google Sheets file that hasn't been exported — won't be accepted. Export it to one of the three first.
If your list is in a PDF, a screenshot of it often imports fine through the photo importer.
It imported, but the wrong information came through
That's not a failure — the file went through, and the importer read the wrong column. Tell it where to look using the AI hint, which takes a plain sentence like "Column 2 is the address". See Import stops for how the hint works and how to save one for reuse.
Nothing was rejected but some stops are missing
Check whether you hit your plan's stops-per-route limit. Imports respect the same ceiling everything else does, and anything past it isn't added. See Plans and limits.