Linking related products quickly.

[MusicCentre]

Hey,

Just wondering if there was a quicker process of adding related products to a product. It seems a bit long winded going through every product to link the same products to it as you have to search through the system every time, you can't just copy and paste as far as I'm aware.

I've avoided using this feature up until now due to the time constraints, I need to start using it as I've put it off long enough, what I need to know is...

Is there any software or a quicker method that anyone knows of to make linking products to related products quicker?

Regards,

Leonard

[leehack]

A quicker way has been detailed in the forum quite recently, it involves going directly into the database to do it. Try a search, should be easy to find.

[fergusw]

The difficulty with wanting software to define related products is exactly how it should define what is related to what.
e.g. Does it go on product names, keywords in description, price bracket, image colour etc

The quickest way, enabling you to "sort of" copy and paste would be to manually enter then via the Access database (*backup before attempting this)

In MS Access open the Actinic Database file. You'll see a table called "RelatedProducts". It's a straight forward lookup table linking related products to a specific product using the references, and ordering them as well.

e.g. If you had a product with reference "MyMainProd" and wanted three related products then in the dB you'd have

nID = {autonumber - generated by database}
sProductRef = MyMainProd
sRelatedProductRef = My1stRelatedProdRef
nOrder = 1

you'd then simply have additional rows for each related product e.g.

nID = {autonumber - generated by database}
sProductRef = MyMainProd
sRelatedProductRef = My2ndRelatedProdRef
nOrder = 2

nID = {autonumber - generated by database}
sProductRef = MyMainProd
sRelatedProductRef = My3rdRelatedProdRef
nOrder = 3

[fergusw]

or look here