Unable to upload my fitbit Data

The file format of Fitbit watches changed after Google acquired Fitbit. Unfortunately Garmin can only import files in the original Fitbit CSV format. Activities can be also imported in couple of other formats: FIT, GPX, and TCX. 

If you are technically inclined, there is a script which can download your fitbit data to a format suitable for Connect. (Haven't tried it myself.)

https://github.com/simonepri/fitbit2garmin 

Here's a related thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/17dvos4/export_lifetime_fitbit_data_to_garmin_connect/ 

It hasn't been updated in 2 years though.

I also see that someone launched a paid service to do the same thing (for $20), also around 2 years ago. I won't link it here unless you really want me to, tho

Seems Garmin should note that.

But I don't understand how a .csv file can be "different" so it can't be read?

I have years worth of data I don't want to lose. Where can I go to get this correct file?

No, something not updated I'm unsure of (although we could argue Garmin hasn't updated their upload tool. And I appreciate the thought but no, don't want to pay $20 just to upload data.

This should be a simple process. But I saw threads 8 years old having this same issue

1366796 said:

But I don't understand how a .csv file can be "different" so it can't be read?

CSV is just a (kinda) standard way to represent tabular data as a text file with rows and columns, where the first row is usually a "header" which consists of titles for each column.

It doesn't specify the format/layout of the data itself.

To say that a file is "CSV" doesn't tell you anything about the number of columns, the meaning of each column, or anything else about the data inside. 

It doesn't say whether body weight (for example) is recorded in lbs, kg, or something else. It doesn't say what columns are in the data or in which order.

Google has changed the format of the data inside the CSV file, which is why Connect doesn't understand it anymore.

As an analogy, you can put any kind of data you want in an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet. Just because you know it's an Excel file or Google sheet, that doesn't tell you anything about the data inside.

Let's say you have an Excel sheet with names of coworkers, their birthdays, and their phone numbers. You decide to use the first column of the sheet for the full name of each person, the 2nd column for the birthday, and the 3rd column for the phone number.

Let's say you share this sheet with the rest of the office and someone writes a little app or script to scrape the data and make an internal website out of it or something, so the whole office can celebrate everyone's birthday and look up their contact numbers. It works great and everyone is happy.

Now let's say you decide to completely change the structure of of sheet. Now the 1st column is the surname, the 2nd column is the given name, the 3rd column is the phone number and the 4th column is the birthday.

The structure and format of the data has completely changed, so that person's app won't work anymore. Your sheet is still an Excel sheet (or Google sheet) but the data is laid out differently.

A human being (or an LLM) could guess at what the new format is, especially if you have column titles. But it would just be a guess.

When importing data, software typically needs to deal with a known format. In general it can't just guess, because that would produce bad results. 

Besides, if you are unwilling to use a 3rd party script (even if it's free), I doubt you would want even Garmin's software to guess how the data is structured in the new Fitbit export format.

They would have to do the work to actually import the file properly, and they obviously haven't bothered to do it.

1366796 said:

No, something not updated I'm unsure of (although we could argue Garmin hasn't updated their upload too

Assuming that it worked 2 years ago, it's possible that it simply didn't need any updates. Maybe Google's export format didn't change since then.

It's a free tool, idk what to tell you. You could always try it out with a dummy Connect account if you are worried about somehow importing bad data which might be hard to remove.

1366796 said:

And I appreciate the thought but no, don't want to pay $20 just to upload data.

Just trying to lay out all your options.

You say that you don't want to lose your data so maybe your only option is to wait for Garmin to fix it? Seems like they haven't done it yet despite having at least a couple of years of time.