HubSpot import error: invalid email address format"

TL;DR

HubSpot rejects rows whose email does not look like an address, and one bad row can stall an import. Validate every email before import with a real parser, fix or quarantine the bad rows, and import the clean set. Never hand-edit a 50k-row CSV to fix three addresses.

Error

Import error: invalid email address format on row 412: "[bad value]"

Steps

1. Export the import's error rows from the import status page. Expected: the exact rows and values that failed.
2. Run the email column through a validator locally (syntax check plus no spaces, no double @). Expected: a clean list of bad rows.
3. Fix what is fixable (trim spaces, remove line breaks) and quarantine the rest into a separate file for manual review. Expected: two files, clean and quarantine.
4. Re-import the clean file. Expected: the import completes with zero email errors.
5. Add the validation step to the agent's pre-import pipeline permanently. Expected: future imports never hit this.

When to use

• HubSpot imports report invalid email address format.
• An agent-generated CSV fails import on email rows.
• After merging data from a source with loose email hygiene.

When not to use

• CONTACTALREADYEXISTS (the email is valid but taken).
• Salesforce email validation (different platform rules).

Tool compatibility

• HubSpot imports UI and imports API.
• Any CSV pipeline feeding HubSpot.

Variant phrasings

invalid email on import row N

Same fix; the row number points at the bad value.

import skipped rows for email

The UI wording for the same rejection.

Why it happens

Import sources (web forms, spreadsheets, legacy exports) accept anything typed into an email box. HubSpot enforces RFC-ish shape at import time, so years of accumulated junk surface all at once.

Edge cases

• Plus-addressed emails (name+tag at domain) are valid; do not strip the plus.
• Internationalized domains are valid but some validators reject them; use a modern parser.
• Empty email cells are fine on non-required imports; only malformed non-empty values fail.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_m0l6dZHD8r1XoXq3H0FF6Q