{"id":773,"date":"2026-10-20T09:03:45","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T08:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/article\/import-error-empty-login-name\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T09:03:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T08:03:45","slug":"import-error-empty-login-name","status":"publish","type":"gd_place","link":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/article\/troubleshooting\/import-error-empty-login-name\/","title":{"rendered":"UsersWP import error: Cannot create a user with an empty login name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress gives this error when UsersWP tries to create a user from a CSV row that has no username. When it shows for every row, the CSV does not use the column names UsersWP expects, so the username is never found. This happens a lot with files exported from BuddyPress or other user plugins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Use the column names from a UsersWP export<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Go to UsersWP > Import\/Export > Users and export your users. If the site only has your admin account, that is enough.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Open the exported CSV in a spreadsheet. Keep its header row and paste your own users underneath. The username goes in the <code>username<\/code> column and the email address in the <code>email<\/code> column. Headings are lower case.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Rename or delete columns from your old file that do not match a heading in the export.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Save the file as CSV (UTF-8) and import it on the same screen.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How the import treats each row<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>If the username or the email address already belongs to an account, UsersWP does not create a second one. It saves the row&#8217;s profile columns to that user.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>New users get a random password. Ask them to set their own with the lost password link.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Only standard columns are imported, such as username, email, first_name, last_name, display_name, bio, phone and user_url. Other columns, including most custom fields from the form builder, are skipped.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Problem rows are reported one by one as &#8220;Row &#8211; 31 Error: &#8230;&#8221;. Fix those rows and run the import again. Users that were already created are matched by username or email, so they are not duplicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the import screen and its options, see <a href=\"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/article\/explore-settings\/settings-overview-for-userswp-import-export-users\/\">Settings Overview for UsersWP > Import\/Export > Users<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WordPress gives this error when UsersWP tries to create a user from a CSV row that has no username. When it shows for every row, the CSV does not use the column names UsersWP expects, so the username is never found. This happens a lot with files exported from BuddyPress or other user plugins. Use [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"article\/tags":[],"article\/categories":[39,7],"class_list":["post-773","gd_place","type-gd_place","status-publish","hentry","gd_placecategory-troubleshooting","gd_placecategory-tips-tricks-more"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/gd_place"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"gd_place_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/tags?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"gd_placecategory","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userswp.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/categories?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}