Can you clear fields with an hierarchical import?

[David@MPL]

I need to empty/clear a load of fields in actinic using an hierarchical update and I was wondering if there's some command that I don't know about which can do this for me.

The problem I have at the moment is that if the field in question is just left empty/blank in the import file, actinic just leaves the pre-existing content in that field. Any thoughts or will they have to be cleared by hand?

Thanks in advance,

[karthik]

Hi David,

To overvcome this problem, you should choose 'Replace' rather than 'Update' while importing the hierarchical file.

I hope this helps.

[David@MPL]

Hi Karthick,

The only problem doing a replace instead of an update is that you have to replace the entire catalogue (if you don't want to loss stuff), not just a small part of it in the way that you can when you do an update.

Oh well, the fields will just have to be cleared manually.

Thanks all the same

[andyh]

Hi David,

What fields do you want to blank out ?

[David@MPL]

Section Description. I thought about just updating the field with a "space", but that then adds another line between the section links.

It's not a massive problem, it's just nice to be able to hand Tony an import file and say "import that and then do an upload please . . . it's done X, Y and Z".

If you do have any thoughts how I might get round it though, that would be good

[andyh]

If you have access installed on your machine, you could use an update query

First make a copy of the database though!!

Then try

update [Catalog section] set sSectionDescription = '';

If the above leaves a blank line in the store, then try

update [Catalog section] set sSectionDescription = null;

I have not tested this myself, but it you have backed up your database, and want to give it a go, it will be much faster than doing each one individually, and if it does not work just copy back your original database.

Note… this will blank all sections descriptions so if there are any you want to keep, you’ll need to exclude these from the query.

Hope this helps

Andy

[David@MPL]

Thanks for the help Andy, but I think I'll get it done manually though . . . we need some sections to be left how they are so it'll be easier to do it by hand.

Cheers all the same,

[DaveSMR]

Old thread I know but...

Was just importing and getting the same result with trying to import a blank/empty full description over something that already had content.

In the end I built the import sheet with a unique identifier (like "Delete Me") and then used Access to filter by this term in the appropriate table. Then I just pasted over this filtered column with the necessary number of blank cells.

It allowed me to selectively adjust products instead of the entire catalog, or doing each manually in from the front end, and so figured I would share in-case anyone else came looking.