Fix Formatting and Missing Data Issues in your Results Files

This guide helps you troubleshoot common issues with PhantomBuster result files: like formatting problems, large file errors, or missing data from Phantoms like the LinkedIn Profile Scraper.

Special characters are not displaying correctly

If you notice that accents, symbols, or special characters are displaying incorrectly in Excel or another spreadsheet tool, it’s likely due to how the file is opened, not the Phantom’s data itself.

How to fix character display in Excel

1. Open Excel and go to: 
   Data > Get Data > From File > From Text/CSV.
2. Select your .csv file.
3. In the import settings:
   • Set File Origin to UTF-8
   • Set Delimiter to Comma (,)
4. Click Load to open the file with proper formatting.

To guide you further, you can check out this step-by-step guide with a video tutorial from Microsoft.

If the issue persists

If characters still display incorrectly, try using Google Sheets instead. It tends to handle special characters more reliably.

You can either:

• Upload the file manually into Google Sheets.
• Use the IMPORTDATA function to import the CSV from a public link.

→ For detailed steps on both methods, refer to our article: Access and Export your Phantom Results to CSV, Google Sheets, or Other Tools

Can’t open large results files in Google Sheets

If you see an error like: 
"Resource at URL contents exceed maximum size" 
It means the CSV file you're trying to import is too large for Google Sheets to handle using IMPORTDATA. 

How to import the large file manually instead

While you will not be able to use the IMPORTDATA function to automatically view the file's data, you can still manually import and view the file by following these steps:

1. Download your results file:
   • Go to your PhantomBuster Dashboard, and click on your Phantom to open the Phantom’s console.
   • Click the Results tab and on Download results to save the CSV file to your computer.
     
2. Open Google Sheets and create a new sheet.
3. Import the file:
   • In Google Sheets, click File > Import > Upload, and select the CSV file you just downloaded.
   • Choose Replace current sheet, then click Import data.
     
   • Your results are now being loaded into the Google Sheet.
     

This method lets you view the full file, but you’ll need to re-import it each time to get updated data.

Alternative: Use Apache OpenOffice

If your CSV file is very large, try opening it in Apache OpenOffice.
It’s free and handles large CSV files better than Excel or Google Sheets without formatting issues.

Data is missing from LinkedIn Profile Visitor results

If you're using the LinkedIn Profile Visitor and notice that your CSV doesn’t include full profile info, that’s expected. The Phantom only includes basic fields in the CSV file.

To get complete data, you’ll need to use the JSON version of the results file.

How to access full LinkedIn profile data

1. Go to your PhantomBuster Dashboard, and click on your LinkedIn Profile Visitor Phantom to open the Phantom’s console.
2. From the Results tab, click on the More dropdown next to the Download results button, then on Download next to the results.json option.
   
3. Copy all the text from the JSON file. and paste it into the first box of an online JSON-to-CSV converter. 

   

4. Download the converted CSV file from the converter. Now, you have access to all the profile data in CSV format.