StriveFormats
MetaAttributesAuto-fixable

Invalid gender value

gender must be female, male or unisex.

What is this issue?

gender must be female, male or unisex.

Affected field:gender

What it looks like in your file

In your file
idgender
2MUG-01Men
3TOTE-01Women's
After the fix
idgender
2MUG-01male
3TOTE-01female

This issue is fixed automatically. Upload your CSV to fix it now.

Fix now

Why Meta rejects this

Other values are ignored, so the product can show to the wrong shoppers.

Valid values / expected format

  1. ✓female
  2. ✓male
  3. ✓unisex

Fix in StriveFormats

This issue is auto-fixable. Upload your CSV and click Fix Issues to apply all safe corrections at once.

Auto-fixable: this issue is corrected automatically when you click Fix Issues.

Fix in Excel

  1. 1In Excel, click the column letter for the gender column.
  2. 2Press Ctrl+H. Type the invalid value in 'Find what' and the correct value in 'Replace with', then click Replace All.
  3. 3The accepted values are: female, male, unisex.
  4. 4To prevent future errors, add a dropdown: select the column, go to Data > Data Validation, choose 'List', and enter the valid options separated by commas.
  5. 5Save as CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited).

Fix in Google Sheets

  1. 1In Google Sheets, select the gender column.
  2. 2Press Ctrl+H, find the invalid value and replace it with the correct one, then click Replace All.
  3. 3Accepted values: female, male, unisex.
  4. 4To add a validation dropdown: select the column, go to Data > Data Validation, choose 'Dropdown (from a list)', and enter the valid options.
  5. 5Go to File > Download > Comma Separated Values (.csv).

Prevent it next time

  1. ✓Copy-paste allowed values directly from the official template to avoid typos.
  2. ✓Use Excel Data Validation or Google Sheets Data Validation to restrict the column to a dropdown of allowed values.
  3. ✓Check the platform's official documentation for the current list of allowed values, as they can change.

How StriveFormats detects this

StriveFormats checks the gender column against the exact list of accepted values for Meta. The comparison is case-sensitive, so any difference in capitalization or spelling is flagged as an invalid value.

►Technical detail
Meta's importer checks this field against a fixed list of accepted values. These are often short codes for internal settings; for example, "active" and "draft" set whether a product is visible. The match is exact and case-sensitive: an extra space, different capitalization, or a synonym (like "enabled" instead of "active") gets the value rejected. The allowed values can change between platform versions, so always check the latest template.