Same Section text, but 2 sections created

[JMK2]

I've been staring at this problem for weeks but as yet cannot seem to figure it out although it must be simple.

I have a spreadsheet with a number of items in section text field such as:
Computers|Electronics|batteries

If I go to the catalog page that lists my sections I can end up with 2 or 3 sections for batteries instead of just 1.

At first I realized it was because some cells contained a space as the first character that I did not notice and that was simple enough to repair. But now to my eye, they all look identical, so I'm at a loss to figure out why it would arbitrarily do this and create two or three identical sections for no apparent reason.

Has anyone else seen this or similar behaviour?

[James M SellerDeck]

Hi Tom

Just something to check, if you go to Design | Options | Sections, then see the tick box 'Include in front page', if that is ticked, try unticking it, and see if that makes any difference?

Having it checked can sometimes give this problem you are getting.

Hope that helps

[JMK2]

Thanks James,

I checked. Alas, the only box I have ticked there is "Include Site Map in Web Site". And under Parent Section Links I have Show Top Level Parent checked, Default location selected as "Top", and Col counts are both set to 1.

I think if I try an experiment and go back and delete the entire group of records and then go manually type them all in again I can get them to show up all as one, at least I think that worked a couple of weeks ago when I tested it on a couple of items. It seems as if there is some sort of corruption going on with the way the spreadsheet is acting but it seems weird because the csv file should be just straight ASCI and I can view it easily and I cannot see any problems with it.

[cdicken]

Try this:

Instead of putting a value like

Computers|Electronics|batteries

for each section, try this:

*|batteries.

The '*' acts as a wild-card and it should force Actinic to add products in to the section you specify, rather than creating new ones.

Plus, don't forget that the import is case sensitive.

[JMK2]

Trust me to always make life complicated. I see one potential problem. If you have another section such as:
Consumer Electronics|batteries

I assume the wildcard to place them all in one. I guess if I cannot get them separated however I may simply have to figure out an alternative strategy such as using distinct words like battery, batteries, Batteries, Battery.

I suspect that the problem is being caused by my source file and not Actinic, I'm going to try something like exporting it to a tab delimited ascii file and see if I can spot any strange things going on in there that way.

Thanks Chris

[JMK2]

Need Excel Expert

Later: Indeed, it appears as though Excel is placing a quotation mark at the beginning of some short descriptions when it exports but not others. As the cells are formatted as "General" I tried to change them to text but then some of the fields become hash marks on export, perhaps because they are deemed too long. Also I thought at first the quotation mark was being forced because the first digit was a number, but I'm finding it happens also with plain text. I assume that it is this quotation mark that immediately follows the section text that causes Actinic to see it as a different section.

I either have to figure out why some General cells are getting the quotation mark prepended and not others, or why Text formatted cells cannot be setup so the hash marks are not placed into them. If any Excel experts have a comment it would be appreciated.

[cdicken]

I don't know about Excel, but I would copy the column to NotePad, tidy it up and then paste it as a new column back into Excel. May not work but it is worth a shot.

WIth regards to your wild card issues, you can include as much or as little of the hierarchy as you want in addition to the '*' in order to pinpoint the correct section e.g.:

*|Batteries
*|Consumer Electronics|Batteries
*|Computers|Batteries