Overview

Error 90005 is a feed processing error that Amazon returns when your uploaded listing file contains characters it cannot recognize or interpret. This typically happens when a file includes special characters, non-standard encoding, or corrupted byte sequences that fall outside the expected character set. For sellers who rely on bulk uploads to manage their catalog, understanding and resolving this error is essential to keeping listings accurate and up to date.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Root cause — The error is triggered when Amazon's feed processor encounters too many bytes in your file that it cannot map to valid characters, indicating an encoding mismatch or data corruption.
• Partial processing — Listings that contain invalid characters will be silently skipped during processing, meaning they will not generate individual error messages and may go unnoticed if you do not review your feed results carefully.
• Warning suppression — Once the threshold of unrecognized characters is reached, Amazon will suppress additional warnings for the remainder of the feed to avoid flooding your processing report with repetitive messages.
• File-wide impact — Because the issue stems from the file's encoding or character data, the problem can affect multiple listings within a single feed submission.
• Resolution required — Amazon will not attempt to guess or auto-correct the problematic characters. You must fix the source file and resubmit your feed.

What Causes Error 90005

This error occurs when the character encoding of your uploaded file does not match what Amazon expects, or when your file contains byte sequences that cannot be translated into readable text. The most common scenario is uploading a file saved with an incompatible encoding format, such as a Windows-specific encoding when Amazon expects UTF-8. It can also happen when you copy and paste text from external sources like PDFs, word processors, or websites that embed hidden special characters such as smart quotes, em dashes, or non-breaking spaces. Another frequent culprit is file corruption during the save or export process, particularly when converting between spreadsheet formats.