Problems importing csv - very basic

[r m]

Hi [1st post here]

I'm having awful trouble importing a 20k row * 20 field csv into MySQL. This is such a basic thing (and I have a lot of experience with SQL server, Excel, R etc) that I think I must be missing something basic.

I've tried 2 approaches:
1) MySQL workbench - but it is painfully slow - only about 10 rows per second?
2) LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE etc but this is producing several different errors (file access amongst them, something else like local_infile not enabled)

The advice I've seen seems to suggest 2) is the better approach - and I guess it's trial and error until I get it to work - but I guess my biggest question is why is 1) so very slow? Luckily for me - we're talking a day or so - but if the table was millions - it would be a non-starter.

Thanks