Hierarchical Import problem...

[shiver]

The answer is...

Excel has a problem when saving .csv files,

open the .csv file in a text editor like notepad turn off wordwrap,
you'll see all the entries on seperat lines

in an example that works - eg info,info,1,0,-1,-1,,0,,0,,,,,0,
there's a comma at the end of every entry

in an example that dosen't works - eg info,info,1,0,-1,-1,,0,,0,,,,,0
there's a comma at the end of every (or the entry causeing the error) entry is missing.

The solution is to add the comma to the end of every row that has it missing. This is fine in principle, but we've got loads of products 2500+ so every time we change the .csv file in Excel we need to redo all the commas, an absolute nightmare.

This is the default answer, I can appreciate it's an Excel problem not Actinic but it dosen't really help.

Does Access handle this better?? ie export .csv files with the comma that can then be imported.

Hope this helps Florian, let me know how you get on.

[shiver]

We got around the problem by deleting any empy or unused columns then imported, once we had the basics woking we moved on and added the next column name and info.

We now have over 2000+ products with all info and pop ups, next step the hirachical export and the components.

Thanks to Tracey @ support.

Any problems Florian, give me a shout and I'll give you more info.

[ajfish]

Import Problem Wrong number of fields.

Was there any solution to any of these problems listed here.
I have just exported a csv file made some mods and imported and most of the data doesn't come back in. I get loads of errors like those mentioned in the post here. "Wrong number of fields. Expected 59 Got 58."
I had been cutting and pasting products and thought it was something I had done, so I exported a csv file, made NO mods and imported the same file and got the errors. I am using V7 Developer.
Is this problem site specific then or is there a general problem here?
I will try and use the import into a new site later today (since I have developer) and see if this is the issue. If I don't get the error when doing this I assume that the problem is something to do with the site into which it is getting imported into. Note that this happens regardless of selecting the update or replace options for the import.

Andrew

[cdicken]

is there a general problem here?

Not sure. I have seen this before - when it's to do with line breaks in the code.

I suggest asking one of the support guys at http://www.actinic.co.uk/support/register.html to take look at the file.

[shiver]

Hi Andrew,
We had a very hard time of it at first with importing products.

The best way we found was to put the products into a spreadsheet (any format)

Clear out your online shop

Export the csv file

File in the exported file one coloumn at a time

Import with each update.

This way you can work out where the errors are generated at each step without getting lost. The import system is very fickle but does work and is worth the effort if you have a lot of products, plus support were very helpful.

[Mike Hughes]

Justin,

I looked at your earlier post where you say there needs to be a comma at the end of the failing lines. Do you still think that ? I just did an export as a test, opened the file in excel, added a new product and saved again as a different filename.

The new file imported (using replace) without problems and looking at both the original and post excel files it looked to me as if there were no commas after the last 0 or 1 in either of the files.

Are you still finding this is the problem or are you finding it's something else?

Mike

[shiver]

To be honest I'd read just about every post in this forum to find possible remedies to the errors we were getting, none of which helped.

Comas, empty columns etc may all be possible causes but were all irrelevant once we got an basic file to import. We then, step by step added the info in to the file, by cut and pasting a column at a time, checking it had worked correctly at each step.

You should be able to knock up a file from scratch with a large amount of products etc but if you get an error at the start of the file it will throw the remainder out. So keep it simple and go for the step by step approach if your unsure, at least you know where the errors originate.

(by column at a time, I'm referring to the additional info eg image to the basic product description needed to get the product into the system)

Another thing which helped was importing all products into the root of the shop to start with and then putting them into sections once that had worked, also try not to use , (comas) in your descriptions, again I dont know if this would cause an error but we just added them once we got the basics right.

Sorry I haven't got a simple remedy, but we did get all 2000+ products in after a slow start.

[solnet]

Tabs or Commas

Is it possible that you are exporting as comma delimited and then trying to import as tab delimited (or the other way around)?

If you are, this can cause problems because a tab delimited file that contains commas will be read completely differently if imported as a comma delimited if any of the fields contain commas (and vice versa).

Hope this makes sense.

[craigp]

Solution for Flat File Import

I was able to get the Flat File Import to work with Excel 97 by making sure that the last column in the spreadsheet had data in every cell. In my case I moved the "Exclude from froogle data feed" column to the end of the spreadsheet making sure that every cell had a zero in it. The Flat File import then worked fine. I have not figured out how to make the Hierarchical Import work yet but perhaps this same fix could be applied to it.