Blank White screen on Data Import Wizard when importing Excel file

Author: Erik Haake

Date: May 5, 2025

Audience: Everyone

Environmental details: Cloud and Self-Hosted

Summary

When importing an Excel file into Jama that contains multiple worksheets, if one contains the '&' character, it can cause a blank white screen during steps 3 and 4 of the import wizard and prevent a successful data import. It does not seem to happen with other characters such as '*', '^', '$', etc.

This is observed when performing a standard Excel import (non roundtrip) where the file contains at least 2 sheets and title of the second or third, etc, contains the '&' character. If this is the case, the following blank screen can be seen on steps 3 and 4 of the Data Import Wizard.

Solution

Simply remove the ampersand '&' character from the worksheet title. It can be replaced with 'and' without changing the meaning of the title. 

Note that the worksheet title is different from the file name. This issue affects the worksheet title.

Cause

In the data dog logs, we can see the following error: 

This suggests that Jama is attempting to convert the '&' character in the worksheet title and is failing, but when the '&' is absent the conversion succeeds.

• Defect: SOS-DEF-8872 

Prevention

Ensure that the worksheet title does not contain the '&' character.

Additional Information/Metadata

• Troubleshooting
• Excel Import

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