We are finding Alma less than helpful in cases where the automated download fails due to a parsing error. Apart from actually creating a log file as suggested here, there would be other ways to improve this experience.

This is what currently happens:
- for automated import profiles, no log file is created when the process fails, the emailed report simply states that the import failed, there is nowhere in alma where I could find any further information
- because of this, we then need to try and run the import manually, so we can see what the issue is
- Alma fails again, this time logs a report stating 'The job completed with errors. For more information view the report details (or contact Support using the process ID).' We need to find the file details under 'Events' (instead of 'View file details'). No meaningful further information is included in the log
- at this stage the file still hasn't been downloaded for us to look at
- so we need to find the relevant ftp connection details and go and download the file ourselves
- then we usually try and import the file again
- at last Alma tells us there is a parsing error, but with no further details (if e.g. there was a duplicate LDR field, it should say so)
- we open the file in marcedit which so far has always worked just fine (ExLibris even recommend this as a workaround)
- because we use marcedit to open it and it copes with these 'errors' we cannot see what was wrong with the file in the first place and we cannot report back to the vendor that supplied the file

Also, I am wondering as Marcedit can be programmed to cope with such things like stray special characters (I assume that's the issue with these files), then it should be possible in Alma too? I have compared both the recompiled marc file with the original file using notepad and I could not spot any differences.