Importing Excel Data - update or replace question

[harlequin]

When importing Excel Spreadsheets into Actinic, if you choose the option to update (not replace) the current data, should Actinic pick up the products that have been deleted as well as those added?

At the moment it seems only to recognise 'new' products and doesnt remove those no longer there.

Our client does a fair amount of work on the Data once it is in Actinic (i.e. customvars -- which by the way dont seem to be able to be specified in an import of data -grrr) and to 'replace' every time means he has to go back in and reassign all the custom variables.

I feel sure that the update method SHOULD remove products that have been removed/deleted from the Excell import file, can anyone help ?

Thanks in advance

[NormanRouxel]

Try this. One of the import fields is something like "Is Deleted". If you specify this in your headers then you can use it to mark an existing product as deleted. If you use this field, remember to mark all your new or updated data so that it isn't likewise deleted.

Norman

[harlequin]

is that hierarchical or flat file

Thanks Norman, is that field ' Is Deleteted' in a hierarchical import as that would explain why Ive never seen it... and I know there probably is a way to include customvars if you use hierarchical import (see grrr above) but our customer is well used to flat file import and has set up a 4500 product database to generate the Excell flat file he needs.

I am think because a lot of the lines they do are one-offs they would really just like to delete off the database and when imported into Actinic the result would be, gone from Excell = gone from Actinic.

I would love to hear why it is called 'update data' when really it should be, 'add any new products remembering to manually delete any old ones....tick here !'

I must admit this shows a weakness of mine,understanding databases and would be grateful for any further thoughts.

[NormanRouxel]

Ahah. IsDeleted is only in Hierarchical. It's a few years since I used Flat File imports, so I'm not sure how you'd achieve what you want there. Let's hope someone else knows.

Norman

[Jan]

You could write them a little SQL query that does an outer join on your product table and the actinic product table and then marks any that don't have details in your product table as deleted in actinic.

They could run this periodically from their access database to keep the two in line.

Regards,

[NormanRouxel]

Steve,

Just re-reading your original post. You'll find that CUSTOMVARS CAN be imported via the Hierarchical system. Maybe time to tinker with it.

Norman