importing products with custom variables

[bookworm]

We want to import a comma-delimited file of books into our catalogue.

There are two custom variables, author and ISDN. I can't import these using the flat file approach so I am trying hierarchical.

However, what I am trying to do is to import products into an existing section and I suspect that a hierarchical import only lets you create sections and products together.

My suspicion is based on the fact that the Product header doesn't contain a section name (unlike the flat file import) which means that it must be wrapped up in a section record in order to put it into the correct section.

Am I correct in this assumption or is there a way of telling the import that I want to update (or ignore) the section record and only import the product records?

Any help much appreciated.

Bob

[Duncan Rounding]

If you have nested sections you will need to also have those nested as they would be in your catalog.

If you are happy using Access then it is quite simple to do an update query to update CV values scoped to product. (Backup first!)

[Cheapprices4u]

hi read my reply here

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...ht=file+import

make one product with the choices you have

export
open in notepad or similar
then copy the same format to the others editing to suit

[bookworm]

Thanks a lot, I've just successfully imported a new product into the correct section with user defined variables intact. The key step that I hadn't thought to try was doing an export first and then editing the output. For the benefit of future generations the steps I followed were:

HOW TO IMPORT NEW PRODUCTS CONTAINING USER DEFINED VARIABLES

1. Export existing catalogue into a text, comma-delimited file.

2. Open the export file in Excel, making sure that fields are defined correctly (ISDN in our case must be text not numeric).

3. Delete all rows relating to brochure pages.

4. Delete all sections apart from the ones we are importing new products into.

5. Delete all products from these sections apart from one that will be used as a template.

6. Remove product reference from this row so that it is inserted as a new product. Copy and paste the row once for each new product.

7. Update all the info where necessary for the new products.

8. Import it into Actinic.

For ease of use you could rearrange the order of the columns so that all the ones that need modifying are bunched together. I've not tried that but assume there wouldn't be a problem (correct me if I'm wrong).

Bob