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    learning hierarchical

    I think the time has come when I either have to learn new skills or consider giving up. I've managed so far on flat file imports but I use two different product layouts and with well over 1,000 products the task of assigning layout manuially has been large enough to discourage me from ever re-importing. I can of course link to an external Excel file and update that way, but I shudder to think what would happen the next time I wanted to apply a percentage change to prices across the board.

    My designer thinks I should consider hierarchical import, and thinks that if I export the catalogue and look at it I should see where everything goes. At first sight, I tend to disagree. There are, for example,figures in the export that don't appear aniywhere in the spreadsheet I imported, and I have no idea what they mean.

    Even figures that are not unexpected are hard to interpret. There will be a cell with a 0 in it, and when I looked at the column headers there will be several to choose from.

    How does one go about learning? And is there any way of getting from a flat file to a hierarchical one?

    Manuials and Help files tend to be written by people who know what they mean. I think I'm going to need something more.

    #2
    Hierarchical files aren't so fearsome. The intial "Header:...." lines name the fields that are used for the subsequent data entries. So if looking at a line beginning "Product", you need to look at the "Header:Product" line to see what maps to what.

    There is also a program that converts existing flat files to hierarchical ones. Look in your SD installation folder for FlatFileConvertor.exe. Click the file to run it. Search for FlatFileConvertor.exe to get some more info. Or see the built-in Help for "Converting a File".
    Norman - www.drillpine.biz
    Edinburgh, U K / Bitez, Turkey

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      #3
      Ahh.... Thank you. I feel strong enough now to go out for a coffee.

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