Useful workaround for importing custom fields

[cdicken]

After scratching my head over a particularly complicated import file, I have come up with the following handy workaround for importing lots of custom data.

Just include your custom fields in the flat file as usual, and when you import the flat file, map your custom fields to any spare import fields you are not using e.g. Date Info, Other Info, Extended Info Text, Report Description etc. Then at least you have the information in Actinic.

Then as soon as the import is completed, do an export of your catalog.

After you have done the export, create your user-definable variables within Actinic - one for each custom field you want to import. Make sure you set the 'Place of Setting' as 'Product'.

Then open your export file in Notepad, and locate the fields in the 'Header' row that you used to import your custom fields. Rename the fields to be the the same as the names for your custom variables.

Then re-import the export file (as a hierarchical file this time) - replacing your data. Your custom field data will be assigned correctly to your user-definable variables you have created in Actinic.

Hope people find that useful.

[wjcampbe]

Chris - incredible timing!!!

I have a spread with 9 custom fields to import and was wracking my brains for how to do it.

Are there any data type restrictions imposed in the database that make certain fields unsuitable for this approach? Or is it a suck it and see proposition?

[cdicken]

Basically, you can only use text fields. Off the top of my head you could use:

Full Description
Report Description
Extended Info Text
Extended Info Link Text
Date Info Prompt
Other Info Prompt

These ones are good as they don't have any restrictions/dependencies.

If you have more than six custom fields to import you could always do them in batches.

[wjcampbe]

Thanks Chris - it's as I suspected. Ill let you know how I get on.

[fatoftheland]

I basically had the same problem guys... All I did was create a flat spreadsheet and imported the data by combining all the columns into the "Full Description Column". Something like split the data you need into columns, for me this contained:

Product Desc | Info URL | Tech Data Table | Link To Accessories | + many more

I then just used the !!<< feature in actinic to wrap the custom properties in html and added it all together into one cell, something like...

=F2&G2&H2&I2&J2 etc etc and copied this down for each product. This creates an enormously long Full description for each product.... However, make sure you keep the separate columns with your custom data in, as Excel does not like doing a find & replace on cells with more than 255 characters, so if you make any mistakes, you need to re-do the combining of each cell after fixing your seperate columns..

[wjcampbe]

Chris - am not getting the new variables as an available mapping field during the import.

What magic setting is missing from the instructions?

[cdicken]

I find that after creating the user-definable variables in Actinic, sometimes I have to restart Actinic before the variables appear in the import list.

[wjcampbe]

Chris - yes, that hacked it. A complete shutdown and restart of Actinic and the new variables showed up and auto mapped.

One new feature surfaced during the subsequent import - the old chestnut about expected 74 got 72 ...

The solution - to ensure the last column in the import file DOES contain data.

I am going to restart this from the beginning and try just adding my new column titles to the end of the import [the re-import that is] - if successful, this would allow the temporary fields abused in the first load to be reset to empty.

[I-CC]

After scratching my head over a particularly complicated import file, I have come up with the following handy workaround for importing lots of custom data.

Is this specific to v8 ?? wondering if possible to do something similar for 1 field (on over 12,000 lines) in v7.

[cdicken]

I'm afraid this is specific to v8 as v8 can import additional product fields as part of a 'Product' record, but v7 can only do it as part of a separate 'CustomProperty' row.

You would need to think about using a field such as 'Information Link Text' or 'Extended Info Text' that your store is not using.

[I-CC]

No worries - thought as much.