hierarchical import problem

[mattsavage]

Hi. I've exported an Excel file, easy.
I've then opened it up, easy.
I've altered one price as a test, easy.
I've imported the file, easy!
But I get an error message. It says
" An unexpected error has occurred while trying to carry out the import. Please check your settings and try again."

However, the change I've made to the test price is updated! And everything seems fine.
I've tried not changing anything and I still get the same message.
I've tried importing just the header product line and the product lines and I still get the same result.

In the future I want to do a global update with the file and add lots of products etc, but I don't want to spend ages working on it if it's not going to load properly. However, as I said, when I change the prices it does update correctly, but I get this message!

Any info would be great, thanks.

Very best regards,
Matt Savage

www.mattsavage.com

[wjcampbe]

Matt,

When you use Excel to save a csv file, there must be data in the last column, or excel will not return the correct number of empty columns needed to map your data correctly into Actinic. Is this what is causing your error?

Just copy any column that has data in every row, and paste it back into the spreadsheet as the new rightmost row, then delete the original column.

Let us know if this solves the problem.

[mattsavage]

Hi. Thanks for your reply. But I'm not sure I understand.
In my exported excel file the column on the far right (column BG) is thumbnail. This has nothing in the column, but it wouldn't, I don't use the thumbnail thing.
I've exported the complete hierarchical file and then simply imported it again untouched, and I still get this problem.
I think you are right though that the excel file needs more or less info!

Cheers,
Matt

[wjcampbe]

If you save a file in excel as csv, excel reads the data from left to right, and outputs the data followed by a comma. When excel reaches the last filled column, it adds the one comma and moves onto the next line.

You may have several empty data columns after the last filled column, so excel saves incomplete data. Normally, this produces an error of 'expected xx columns received yy' where xx is the number of commas inserted by excel plus one (for the last column in the row) and yy is the number of columns that should exist in the import.

It is actually much easier to do price updates with a flat file consisting of only the minimum required columns (from the Importing Data help topic in Actinic) and the price column.