Hello, 

Yes this is a very common issue in real-world Odoo implementations, especially with legacy Excel data.

In most projects, the safest approach is to treat data preparation as a separate validation step before import. Typically this includes:

• Converting Excel files to clean CSV format
• Forcing text formatting for SKUs, barcodes, and IDs
• Validating dates before import
• Trimming leading/trailing spaces
• Running duplicate and consistency checks
• Performing small test imports first

You're absolutely right that Odoo’s import validation mainly checks structure, not silent Excel corruption. Because of that, many teams use a combination of preprocessing templates, validation rules, and sometimes custom scripts for large datasets.

There isn’t one universal method across the community, but the overall best practice is definitely: “clean, validate, test import, then migrate.”

Hope this works for you! If you need any help implementing this or want a more optimized approach, feel free to reach out for further discussion.

Regards,

Zehntech Technologies Inc.

santosh.sekwadia@zehntech.com