Losing products on hierarchial import

[hale-pope]

This is my first post so please go easy and yes, i have searched for answers but not found full ones unfortunately. We had the common problem of losing a section when shifting stuff around but having a back up was not too worried. I imported our site from a snapshot.acd file we had on a 'hierarchial import update' (not import snapshot mode) and it updated the info leaving all the changes we had made to the site that had not gone missing whilst bringing back the lost section. However, whilst all sub sections are present and correct over 75% of the product pages have not imported. I have tried to do another import but an error comes up telling me the first line of the file is incorrect. I am stumped as the info i have found to date tells me that i should not have been able to an hierarchial import with an acd file anyway. Please does anyone have any ideas on what i need to do? Thank you.

[Duncan Rounding]

You can't import a snapshot as an hierarchical file - hence the error message you are getting.

I think you need to go back to the last good snapshot again.

[hale-pope]

Hi David - thank you for replying. From reading the info on the forum before my initial post I totally agree. Problem is, I do know that I did a hierarchial import and it was not, as far as i can tell, a csv file. I should have made better notes at the time but I am where i am.

I do have a csv file from a few months ago that has the whole website on it. Am i able to use this but only import certain products from it as i do not want to overwrite a section that I have made updates too.

Also - how do i go about getting a csv file from a site. Is this 'database back up' that is found in site 1? Thanks.

[Duncan Rounding]

File - Export will create an hierarchical export file in csv type format of all the sections/products/brochure pages etc for the store but will not contain any images or design.

File - Snapshot - Export will create an acd file (a zip file) containing everything to do with the store including the above as well as all images/design/orders/accounts etc.

A database backup is just that - a backup of the Actinic database but it does not contain any images and can only be restored as is, not selectively.

It is possible to use an existing hierarchical csv type export file and modify it to only have the products/sections etc you want but you will need to understand the structure of the file which is not too difficult once you get your head around it.

[hale-pope]

Understood.

Am i right in thinking that I can do nothing with my Snapshot other than import it as a whole into my existing site and therefore lose any updates i have done to the site in the meantime?

Also, the csv file, though not holding any images, has the code to tell the site where to find the images on the main computer to upload to the site?

If i upload and 'update' with the .csv file can I assume it will just update with items that are not on the folder it is being imported into and won't change existing product information so i could, theoretically update using the whole csv file as it will only place subsections and products into the site that are not currently there?

[Duncan Rounding]

The csv file will update all settings to existing products/sections etc.

The csv file does not contain network settings.

Knowing the format of the csv file and you can merge two versions together.

The snapshot will replace all information.

[Duncan Rounding]

I should add therefore you can create an export of your current site, restore an older snapshot, export that too and then (with some effort) merge the two together and update to include the combination.

[hale-pope]

Thank you. I think that last bit is beyond my rather narrow capability.

One thing still confuses me. The hierarchical import that i did previously imported the items that had been lost but did not (luckily) update the existing items on the site. This meant that price changes etc that had been done in the meantime remained it situ. Was i just extremely lucky or is it built this way?

I am unsure as to why not all my products came over with my hierarchical import. The previous paragraph about being lucky not withstanding, should i import again and see if the products are picked up this time? I did save a 'fail' file from the the last import but not gone through it yet.

Thanks.

[Duncan Rounding]

Try again but remember your primary backup should always be a snapshot. Make them very regularly.

[Sean Williams]

One thing still confuses me. The hierarchical import that i did previously imported the items that had been lost but did not (luckily) update the existing items on the site. This meant that price changes etc that had been done in the meantime remained it situ. Was i just extremely lucky or is it built this way?

Possibly when importing the hierarchic you chose the Update function, rather than the Replace?

[hale-pope]

Yes - it was on 'update' and not 'replace'.

[hale-pope]

...but might you know why not all of the products did not get imported?

[Duncan Rounding]

If there is an error on a parent section then any child sections and the containing products will not be imported.

[Sean Williams]

And if something is faulty and does not get imported, the import routine will provide an errors.txt file. Actinic should ask you if you want to read this when it has finished running the import.
If you read it, it will tell you which lines of the .csv are causing the trouble.

[hale-pope]

HI - I am trying that import again, just to be sure. We have a multi site so i have also tried copying and pasting a product from one of our other sites. This has not worked as sometimes the product disappears off the content tree and if it is stays on it can't be seen on upload. Weird. Which gets me thinking about your 'parent and child comment'. This may not be the correct forum to ask but are there some recommended actinic programmers out there you can recommend me to contact to merge and import?