Import Product List

[ajayjain]

hi,

How can i import Item list in actinic , i have a list of 15000 items
with 2-3 custom fields like manufacturer,size etc.

thx

ajay jain
ajay@integrated-tec.co.uk

[NormanRouxel]

With 15,000 items your first consideration is putting them into sections (and possibly sub-sections) as I doubt that you'd want to have them all there in one big list.

Have you got enough data in your custom fields to help generate the sections? It might be a good idea to let us know how you'd want your data ordered and what fields you have available to do it with. Also what form is that data? Excel, Access, etc?

Listening . . . Norman

[ajayjain]

thx Norman,

I have an excel sheet of 15000 items. first how should i import
that list , do i need to write code in vb.
second how will i maintain like manufacturer code will be used for search and if later i need some changes how will i make changes in 15000 items in actinic. i have just simple item list and i can format according to requirement like section etc. i have got actinic just one week before and no experience in it.

thx

regards
ajay jain

[NormanRouxel]

You may want to first consider the Flat file way of importing into Actinic. This is basically one line per product and one of the fields "Section text" contains the name of the section to put that product into:-

If you export from Excel as either a Comma Separated or Tab Separated file, you will get a file that Actinic can cope with. here's the example from the Actinic Help file (NOTE THE COLUMNS DON'T LINE UP):-

Section text Short Description Price Can Be Ordered Online? Tax Treatment
Hats Bobble Hat 450 1 2
Gloves Sheepskin Gloves 600 1 2
Gloves Leather Driving Gloves 850 0 2

To create sub-sections, separate each section with a vertical bar, thus: Wood|Oak would create a section called Wood and a sub-section called Oak. The product that is being imported would be part of the Oak section, not the Wood section. See Importing Sub-Sections for more information.


(c) Actinic Software Ltd

To save the source file you must:
Save the source file as either 'tab-delimited' or 'comma-delimited'. The comma-delimited file would look like:
Section text, Short Description, Price, Can Be Ordered Online, Tax Treatment
Hats, Bobble Hat, 450, 1, 2
Gloves, Sheepskin Gloves, 600, 1, 2
Gloves, Leather Driving Gloves, 850, 0, 2
To create sub-sections, separate each section with a vertical bar, thus: Wood|Oak would create a section called Wood and a sub-section called Oak. The product that is being imported would be part of the Oak section, not the Wood section. See Importing Sub-Sections for more information.


(c) Actinic Software Ltd

Norman again. Now it's unlikely that your spreadsheet contains exactly the section text data but you can always create a new column in the spreadsheet that contains the required data. Lets imagine you're selling elementary particles and you have a field called "Type" containing data like "Leptons", "Hadrons", etc. And you have another field called "Particle" containing types like "Electrons", "Protons", etc. Finally your alchemy lab is able to sell there in Products like "Standard", "Positron". So you might have a row in Excel containing a product like:-

Type,Particle,Product,Sell Price
Hadrons, Electrons,Standard, 10.00
Hadrons, Electrons, Positron, 50.00
Leptons, Quarks, Left Handed, 5.00
Leptons, Quarks, Right Handed, 5.00

Now you need to make that match the example earlier. Your field Product should be renamed to "Short Description" as that's what Actinic uses. To get a section structure you would get excel to make a new column called "Section Text" containing Type + "|" + Particle. Also you want the price in pennys so you'd want a new filed called "Price" containing Int(Sell Price * 100). Finally the import example above needs fields "Can Be Ordered Online" and "Tax Treatment", so we just set the whole columns to our defaults of "1" = Yes and "2" = Vatable.

So your new spreadsheet looks like:-

Type,Particle,Short Description,Sell Price, Section Text, Price, Can Be Ordered Online, tax Treatment
Hadrons, Electrons, Standard, 10.00, Hadrons|Electrons, 100, 1 , 2
Hadrons, Electrons, Positron, 50.00, Hadrons|Electrons, 500, 1 , 2
Hadrons, Protons, Standard, 5.00, Standard|Standard, 500, 1 , 2
Leptons, Quarks, Left Handed, 5.00, Leptons|Quarks, 500, 1 , 2
Leptons, Quarks, Right Handed, 5.00, Leptons|Quarks, 500, 1 , 2

Now export that as a Comma or Tab Separated file and get Actinic to import it as a flat file.

It will automatically match the fields Short Description, Section Text, Price, Can Be Ordered Online, Tax Treatment. The fields, Type, Particle and Sell Price are no longer needed and will be ignored. This will build you a site like this:-

Hadrons (this is a top level section heading)
--Electrons (this is a sub section of Hadrons)
----Standard (finally a product)
----Positron (another product)
--Protons (another sub-section of Hadrons)
----Standard (product)
Leptons (a new top level section)
--Quarks (sub section of Leptons)
----Left Handed (product)
----Right Handed (product)

Enough for now. I'm sure there's enough in the Help file and documentation to take you further. Since you're importing everything at this stage you can always delete all the products in Actinic (or do an Import / Replace) and try again till you get something you can use.

Norman