How do I permanently delete a 'Duplicate Product'?

[ComicDomain]

Am getting ready for some seriously needed spring cleaning of the stock range on our shop. Being the type of business that we are means that having back issue stock that comes and goes fairly frequently is great when we can just 'delete' the item and both the item and it's duplicate in another section also gets 'turned off'.

But now we're looking at expanding our range of stock so we were going to give it a much needed clean but we can't seem to permanently delete the 'product duplicate'.

With products that don't have a 'duplicate' we simply 'cut' them out, but when a procust does have a 'duplicate' we can't do that.

So is there a way to easily permanently remove a product duplicate?

[Duncan Rounding]

You can Purge product data under Housekeeping. This will permanently remove all items that are marked for deletion. Backup first - this is a one way street.

[ComicDomain]

Thanks for that Duncan, but thats not going to help us I'm afraid.

We have literally 1000's of back issues which have all their product descriptions - we buy in collections, so having an item deleted 'turned off' helps us because we don't loose any of that info, when an item comes backn in-stock - we simply undelete 'turn on' the item again and hey presto all the product details are there.

What we need is a way to delete the 'product duplicate' but still keeping the original product intact. As our quantities of 'product duplicates' are mounting and we can't get rid of them.

[TraceyG]

Hi,

Can't you use the 'cut' method on the duplicates? Just make sure you undelete them first and the 'cut' option should then be available.

It's not a bad suggestion to have a 'purge duplicates' option in the 'Housekeeping | Purge' list so I'll add it to the wish-list.

[TraceyG]

Hi,

Just had an after-thought, if you want to keep a product but not have it on the website until it comes back in stock, it would probably be a better idea just to 'hide on website' and then you could delete those products that you want to permenantly get rid of and use the purge option.

[ComicDomain]

Hi Tracey,

Thanks for the reply - nope fraid not, it a vicious loop on that one.

You can't 'cut' the duplicate because it's connected to the original product wether it's deleted (on or off) or not - and you can't 'cut' the original because it's connected to the duplicate.

I think a tidy option for now is to produce a section specifically for dead duplicates and simply turn it off, that way all our duplicates that we don't need anymore are at least in one location.

Would certainly like to see if that possible for Actinic going forward - it would certainly help our type of business.

[ComicDomain]

Hi,

Just had an after-thought, if you want to keep a product but not have it on the website until it comes back in stock, it would probably be a better idea just to 'hide on website' and then you could delete those products that you want to permenantly get rid of and use the purge option.

aha! Now thats worth trying...

[Jan]

I can cut duplicates, you have to undelete the main product and then cut the duplicate.

Regards,

[ComicDomain]

Hi Jan,

Nope doesn't work for me...

I've tried ctrl and x and right clicking selecting cut and neither work.

[Jan]

Does it have a red x on it, and do you get an error message?

Regards,

[ComicDomain]

Hi Jan,

If the original product is active then the duplicate product is also active - neither the original product or the product duplicate have a red X on it. The red X indicates that it is deleted 'turned off' The product duplicate has a blue arrow on it...hence it's a duplicate.

When trying to 'cut' the product duplicate no error message appears at all. However when trying to 'cut' the original product I receive this error message:

"The cut operation is aborted. At least one of the products in the selected product(s) has duplicate product(s) in the other section(s)."

Remember: This is a 'product duplicate' and not a 'copy n paste' of a product.

[Duncan Rounding]

I can definitely cut duplicates so long as neither they nor the main product are marked for deletion. Something seem's fishy with your setup - try compacting it.

[Jan]

What state is the product in when you try to delete the duplicate? Is it on or off (ie: red cross or not).

I think Duncan might well be right, try to create a new product, duplicate it and then cut the duplicate without doing anything to the product and see what happens.

Regards,

[TraceyHand]

I've been following this with growing confusion!
I think maybe you are trying to CUT a duplicate where the main product is already deleted (red cross/turned off)

If you need to cut a duplicate to permanently delete it without purging, you need to undelete the main product first.

Does that help?

[ComicDomain]

Hi Jan, Hi Tracey,

Confused...getting there

It's one of those things when trying to describe something that should be so simple...

• The original product is ON
• The original product does NOT have a red cross icon
• The product duplicate is the same as above
• We still can't 'cut' the product duplicate

Compacting didn't work either.

And we tried creating a brand new 'product' with a brand new 'product duplicate' and still can't 'cut' it or find a way to permanently remove the duplicate without losing the original.

So far TracyG gets top marks and a gold star for suggesting 'hiding on the web' which we've tested and helps solve our untidy problem. The catch is we need to apply it to several thousand items.