Checking ‘plist’ file for errors & bugs, A nice utility to have for developing iOS Apps based on plist files. You will find this post helpful when you add & edit plist file in your next big iOS project & you get this error ‘The data couldn’t be read because it isn’t in the correct format.’

If you are from iOS Design & Development community you may have had already familiar with using Apple’s plist i.e. Property List file functionality where by you store your data in xml file type (Apple’s plist file format).

 
Adding to 1,000 lines of code in plist file is pain so what you do is copy paste through source tab.

 
but if you have done something wrong with structure of plist file you will get error something like this

 

 

ERROR: ‘The data couldn’t be read because it isn’t in the correct format.’

 
So how to solve this error you can take following steps.

 

Step 01:

 
Go to Applications Folder > Utilities > Open Terminal App

 
Step 02:

 
I will assume you have stored your faulty .plist file in Desktop folder

 
So type this code in Terminal App to change directory to Desktop

 

cd ~/Desktop

 
Step 03:

 
Now assume your faulty plist’s file name is something like this file-name.plist

 
So now type following command & Terminal App will show error with line number which will finally help you to rectify your mistake & make it plist file valid to use in your iOS App Development Xcode project

 

plutil file-name.plist

 
Hope it helps,

 
Thanks & Regards
Mandar Apte