Imported Meetings posted with Appointment noted for meeting time

[jking9509]

We are utilizing WordPress 6.8.3 with Elementor Pro. I'm attempting to import a large number of meeting from our Districts who only could provide a paper schedule for me to work with.

I've validated the spreedsheet comparing formating and column positions, I believe the data is correct . However each time I save the CSV file the time format that I have set reverts back to General. This may be the problem

I have attached the spreadsheet, hoping someone can help identify why this is happening, so I can post these meetings and help me know how to stop this issue from happening.
meeting.template.Dist.13.Area.66.10-26-25 R1a.csv

[jking9509]

The website has a temp address as this is a working copy prior to posting: johnk588.sg-host.com
My email address is jtk9509@gmail.com

[SIA-WEBSUP]

@jking9509, how is this different than #1796?

Have you tried opening the file up in a text editor and replacing the funky characters with a space?

[jking9509]

Thanks for your reply.... I see the an error that I have to fix before anything else can happen... let me work on correcting this and I'll see if this help before I ask for further assistance.

[SIA-WEBSUP]

How are you generating this CSV? Or are you getting this CSV from someone else?

I asked ChatGPT for a little assist and here is what it gave me:
Short version: it’s almost certainly copy-paste + encoding mismatch, not “Apple vs Windows.”

What probably happened

1. Source text had non-breaking spaces
   The times were likely copied from a web page, Word/Pages, or another rich-text source that uses   (NBSP) between the time and “AM/PM” to prevent line breaks. Same story for en dashes in phrases like “– B-Day Night.”

2. The CSV was saved in a single-byte encoding (Windows-1252/Latin-1)
   In that encoding NBSP is the byte 0xA0. Your hex dump shows exactly that.

3. Later, something read the file as UTF-8
   When a reader expects UTF-8 but sees lone 0xA0, it can’t decode it, so it shows the black diamond replacement �.

So the “funky character” is NBSP carried through from rich text, then saved as cp1252, then opened as UTF-8.

How to prevent it (practical)

• Export as UTF-8 end-to-end. In Excel: “Save As” → CSV UTF-8 (not plain CSV). In Google Sheets: File → Download → CSV (UTF-8).

• Paste as plain text into your sheet before export (or use “Paste values”).

• Normalize inside the sheet before export:

  • Excel: =SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(160)," ") to replace NBSP; and =SUBSTITUTE(...,UNICHAR(8211),"-") for en dash.
  • Google Sheets: =SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(160)," ") and =SUBSTITUTE(...,CHAR(8211),"-").

• On import, explicitly set the file origin/encoding to match the actual file (cp1252 vs UTF-8).

[SIA-WEBSUP]

I was able to confirm this morning that you can replace that funky character entirely within Excel. The funky character is most likely a non-breaking space

1. Open the file
2. Select the character between 7:00 and AM ( pretty sure this is a NBSP)
3. Copy (that single NBSP onto the clipboard)
4. hit Ctr-H to bring up the copy / replace dialog
5. Paste (that single NBSP which you've put on the clipboard - it will look like a blank space in Excel)
6. enter a single space character in the replace field
7. Hit Replace All button
8. Save file

[jking9509]

Thanks for your help. I got this resolved. I had multiple issue, the worst was human error. After I resolved that the rest of the problem was easy to corrrect.