import snapshot to ADD rather than overwrite?

[LouPhi]

My customer has recently noticed a large amount of products have somehow disappeared. Something similar happened previously when we moved some sections, and on that occasion I discovered that this is a known bug with Actinic V9.

We have an old snapshot which includes the missing products, from this I have deleted everything but the missing products, and saved a snapshot. But what I want to know is, can this smaller snapshot be imported into the current snapshot without OVERWRITING... I just want to ADD it to the existing site?

Any help gratefully received!

[leehack]

Not via snapshots no, you will need to use hierarchical imports instead, export from dummy site, import into broken site, ensuring you are adding new, not updating. If you have multisite you can try a copy paste of the sections too, put the images in right place first then copy paste sections between sites.

Losing products is not a v9 bug exclusively, happens in v8 and v10 still to this day.

[Duncan Rounding]

Firstly backup what you have live then export the 'trimmed' catalog and import that into your live site, selecting update.

You cannot merge snapshots, only export/imports.

[LouPhi]

Losing products is not a v9 bug exclusively, happens in v8 and v10 still to this day.

Shame they can't find a fix - this is a large site, and unless the sections are expanded in the content tree, there's no way of knowing if products/sections have disappeared until you try to amend them...obviously they still exist in an old snapshot, but multiple changes have been made to the site since then so its not just a case of reloading an old snapshot. The pesky products just silently slip away

Thanks for your help - will try exporting the database with just the products in question and import it into the current site (fingers crossed)

[Sean Williams]

Ooer - this is news to me!
Can anyone give a few more details on this apparent bug and how to spot/avoid it?
CB?

[jont]

It tends to happen when moving big sections with lots of subsections and products around in the content tree. If you have to move a monster section take a copy of the .mdb file first and then move the sub-sections a few at a time rather than going for everything in one hit - even creating temporary sections as holding sections is an idea.

This is probably more a Windows / Access / PC related issue than a specific Actinic bug. Little and often is the keyword to success on moving stuff around.

[Duncan Rounding]

I seem to recall that cutting and pasting worked better than moving, but may be wrong.

[LouPhi]

Ok - I've tried several times to clip only the missing products from an old snapshot - exported the database... and then tried importing this into the latest snapshot as an 'update' - but Actinic keeps failing saying

"No fields were found in the first line of the file....."

But I've also tried it this way - exported the missing products database, then exported the latest snapshot (with the products missing) database... opened both in excel, copied the lines of product information from the missing products into the latest database, and then tried importing this into Actinic as a 'replace' but this too is failing with the same error message.

I don't understand why as I'm doing a straightforward export, and using the same settings to import the database each time?

[Duncan Rounding]

Open the resultant csv file in Notepad (or Notepad++) and look at the file - you will probably see a line full of commas - if so delete the line, save and retry the import.

[LouPhi]

The first line contains this:

Header:ContentCategories,Name,Content Level,Sequence,Default,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

So (just to check) I deleted it - leaving this as the first line:

Header:Section,Section name,Section Description,Section Image,Section Meta Description,Section Meta Keywords,Section Included in Search,Section Hidden on Web Site,Page Name,IsDeleted,Section Use Parent Settings,Section Single Add To Cart Button,Section Quantity Placement,Exclude From Google Product Search Data Feed,Page Title,Include to Site Map,Content Category,ExtendedInfoPageDesign,ExtInfoWindowWidth,ExtInfoWindowHeight,StandardLayout,ProductLayout,ProductList,SingleAddToCartButton,SubSectionListTop,MainArea,SectionLink,ProductImageLayout,PriceLayout,AttributeLayout,AttributeList,ComponentLayout,ComponentList,FragmentLayout,FragmentImage,SubSectionListBottom,SectionLinkColumnCount,ProductColumnCount,SectionLinkFirstRowColumnCount,ExtendedInformationLinks,ExtendedInformationType,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,



Just re-tried the import - but the same message is coming up??? "No fields were found in the first line of the file"

CONFUSED? Yes - very!!

[Sean Williams]

Did you open the .csv file with Excel?

[LouPhi]

On this occasion no - but I HAD previously - is that the problem? I'll try re-exporting the database and ONLY open using Notepad and see if I can remove the line of commas (if its there) and then import to the current snapshot....

[Duncan Rounding]

Post the first few lines of the file (inside forum code tags) - including the headers and a couple of data lines so we can see what's going on.

[Sean Williams]

We find that after opening with Excel, you will need to do these things:
1. You'll find one or two empty rows at approx 10-14 and possibly again a few lines further down - delete these empty rows.
2. Scroll down column A until you reach the last row of the file - possibly labelled END OF SECTION - make a note of the row number.
From A1, scroll right to the end of the data in the worksheet (using the slider will usually take you to the end of the data). In the first empty column put in a character (we use 'n') in all the cells of that first empty column, down to the last row (the number you made a note of).
Save the file and it should import into Actinic without giving that "No fields were found in the first line of the file" error.
The only thing to really check well is of course that you don't overwrite any existing data.

[LouPhi]

Ok - its partly worked. I re-exported the missing products into a .csv file - opened it in notepad (no row of commas) so I tried importing this as an 'update' and it has worked better than last time.... however I have an error file with a long list of duplications (ie, Line 127: A product with this reference already exist in another section) however I can't decipher how to find line 127 and it doesn't give the 'reference' thats duplicated - so impossible to search for it in either databases!!

At least I know 'some' of my missing data is back - but can anyone tell me how to count the lines in the exported database?? Do I discount certain rows at the top? etc etc??

This is like pulling teeth.... (but thanks to all for your help so far!)