Unacceptable list separator when loading Family Types FIX

I received the ‘Unacceptable list separator’ error while trying to:

load a family from file into a project, and
load types into the family from a Type Catalog.

I assumed the problem was to do with Type Catalog. The family I was trying to load was from the ‘Australia’ default content –

AustraliaStructuralFramingSteelCHS-Circular Hollow Sections (AS 1163).rfa

To fix this issue I followed these steps:

Open the Family
Export the Types to a Type Catalog file. The exported Type Catalog should only include one type, but the syntax should be correct…
Open the exported Type Catalog in Excel – as a comma-delimited file
Open the ORIGINAL Type Catalog in Excel – as a comma-delimited file
Copy the fields from the ‘Original’ default Type Catalog into your new ‘fixed’ Type Catalog (there may be more columns in the ‘fixed’ version, just Auto-Fill the other fields as necessary)
In Excel, save the ‘fixed’ version as:
Other Formats – CSV (MS-DOS)
After closing the file, rename it so that .TXT is its extension.
Use this fixed Type Catalog to load all of the types into the opened Family.

Discussion

4 archived comments. New comments are not enabled.

Paul F. Aubin 2011-09-06 13:22:20

Have you run into any issues exporting type catalogs and having Revit fail to recognize the "Cost" column? I was working on a Family last week. Added some cost data. Exported the Type Catalog, edited in Excel, and tried to resave and use as a Type Catalog. Each time, Revit fails to import the Cost column. Even when I simply export and try to immediately import back in. Seems to be a bit buggy to me, but wanted to see if anyone else had the issue before reporting. Thanks.

Anonymous 2012-06-01 03:30:47

I'm using Revit Architecture 2012. I have the same problem with a "window family".
1.- First, Revit allows me to create the catalog successfully
2.- When I try to load the family, I get the following message: "Invalid column unit type: ", then "Could not parse column header: Cost"
3.- After the messages, Revits loads all "Family Types". No catalog screen to choose.
4.- The parameter "Cost" under "Identity Data" group, is not available to Modify or Remove. So, I'm stuck.

Can anyone help me?
Thanks

revit training 2015-06-12 10:05:45

So Many Thanks for Solving my problem..I was stuck in the same problem and your tips help me out to solve it.

Geoff Jennings 2022-11-07 22:04:49

The list separator error is usually caused by the encoding of the .txt file. The "UFT8" and "UTF-8 with BOM" has embedded characters at the start of the file. Older version of Revit will generate the 'Unacceptable list separator' error during loading of a .txt catalog file. Revit 2020 and prior versions have different restrictions than Revit 2021-current. To overcome the error, I find it as best practice to open the .txt file in Notepad and then resave the .txt as an "UTF-16 LE" encoded .txt file. This format seems to work in all versions of Revit and also allows for special characters(i.e. foreign languages) to be properly loaded into Revit families. By changing the .txt encode to UFT16-LE you should not have to do any tedious reworking of your family type catalog file.