Importing Products that may or may not be duplicates

[rookers]

Hi, I have been having a good look into this but have not come up with an answer. I am going to be importing a lots of products - ok no problem. The problem is that they are going to site in different sections of the website, and may or may not be duplicates.

How can I import the flat file, get actinic to check to see if the product already exists, and if it does then create a duplicate. I don't want the original updating or moving, just a duplicate creating. We're talking about many 100's of products and I will not know whether it is a duplicate or not and want it to be an automaic process.

Any info useful thanks.
Jez

[DaveSMR]

Hi Jez,

We had to do something similar to this and resolved it by a spot of pre-processing of the import file.

We took the list of current products and duplicates from Actinic db through access. Then put these into a spreadsheet and used VLOOKUP functions combined with IF functions to edit the product ref to the appropriate ref i.e. 1!PRODUCTREF.

It wasn't exactly easy getting the first cell done but there after it was easy to copy the formula (just remember to fix your array for the VLOOKUP).

There is no doubt an easier way to do this but I hope this helps.

[AdieB]

Dave,

Have you managed to export using Access and the catalogue db, the product reference and the Section Text(Category).
I haven't yet found which field the category is in the db???

[DaveSMR]

I am possibly misunderstanding you but the Section text is part of the Catalog Section table (effectively the Section Name when viewed through Actinic).

On an import it would put the product into the Section of that name.

EDIT

Just re-read your question. You could build a query in access where you link the two tables and call the necessary fields. You would see something like
SECTION 1 PRODUCT1
SECTION 1 PRODUCT2
SECTION 1 PRODUCT3
SECTION 1 PRODUCT4
SECTION 1 PRODUCT5
SECTION 2 PRODUCT1
SECTION 2 PRODUCT2
SECTION 2 PRODUCT3
SECTION 2 PRODUCT4

I guess you could then copy this data for whatever you require.