Wanted Instructions Import Categories, SubCategories, Products

[hoppy]

PrestaShop™ 1.5.4.1

 

I have been struggling with Prestashop Import categories for 2 days now (bank Holiday weekend no one around). Getting nowhere. About ready to give up on Prestashop. Nice script but just importing categories has been a nightmare, and we haven't started on 3000 products yet

 

I have about 250 Categoories and subcategories to import. There is no sample query "Import categories AND SUBCATEGORIES" This makes things difficult because you have to try to imagine what the Prestashop designers were thinking

 

I have downloaded the sample query "Import categories" and deleted the existing MAIN categories (there are no SUB CATEGORIES) that came with the sample data PrestaShop™ 1.5.4.1 and I was able to re-import those OK.

 

I have checked around the web and Youtube for instruction but this subject is very skipped over and is not in any detail anywhere.

I found a dutch site here and tried to recreate what he suggested

http://www.howtomake...ories_excel.jpg

 

But when I downloaded the sample file it does not look anything like the clean and tidy file above

A1 = 9 columns together in the A1 field/Column: id;Active (0/1);Name*;Parent Category;Description;Meta-title;Meta-keywords;Meta-description;URL rewritten;Image URL

B2 Another couple of fields

C3 Part of another field

 

Not easy to recreate that over 250 Categories and sub Categories

 

I must be missing something. Can anyone point me in the right direction. A video or detailed text instruction.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Best regards

Jeff

Edited May 27, 2013 by hoppy (see edit history)

[hoppy]

Prestashop 1.5.4.1

 

If anyone could help I would be most grateful.

 

I have uploaded a csv file in the recommended format for Categories and sub categories

 

I have prepared the csv file "all in one column"

 

and "all in separate columns"

 

but no joy. This is the result

 

This the most important part of using this software for us. Even on Amazon and eBay we get this right. What am I doing wrong here?

 

The attachments explain what is wrong better than I can.

 

Thanks

Edited May 29, 2013 by hoppy (see edit history)

[hoppy]

Is anyone out there? Something. Anything.

[preserver]

You're not alone- the instructions for the csv loader are by no means adequate. I have been sorting this thing out for ages- months intermittently.

 

From looking at your spreadsheets I can tell you a couple of things I have picked up:

You're not supposed to list subcategories as their own column. Definitely not. The way you list categories for a product depends on whether you want them listed in multiple layers of categories or not. So as to uploading the categories- list subcategories with a parent/ child manner. Say I have an animal root category. I want dog to be a subcategory of animal, so I list its parent as animal. The columns you upload should be like this:

id Active (0/1) Name* Parent Category Root category (0/1) Description Meta-title Meta-keywords URL rewritten Image URL

 

This is not all of the possibilities, just what I had around. If you go to the csv page- you can download an example. Use whichever of those columns you like. Leave out what you don't want/need.

 

Then when you go to upload a file, you correlate the selection bar at the top with what you actually have in the column. (You can save a certain format if you are going to upload a bunch of files with the same columns.

 

Let me know if any of this is helping, or if you have other questions.

 

I will say that it has been a LOT of trial and error to get it figured out. Plus, there are certainly bugs in at least 1.5.3.1's AdminImportController that affect product images and categories.

 

Right now I can't get seem to figure out how to get what I actually want to appear on the top menu bar. Right now it is like a wild guess as to what will appear there. I enter different categories to go up there by designating them as 1 as opposed to 0 under the 'Root Category' column, but I honestly can't figure out how it works, if it is a bug or what?

 

Does anyone know if there is a bug with root categories in 1.5.4.1's CSV importing/ loading code? I have only gotten two categories to appear in what I thought was the root level- the main top black menu bar. How are you supposed to get the categories onto/ into the top level menu bar? I thought that was entering them as 'root', but maybe not...

[hoppy]

Thanks for answering preserver I was beginning to think there was no one there ;-)

 

This does seem to be Prestashop's weak spot. I have seen it mentioned all over the web. No one gives a proper detailed explanation how to:

1. Prepare the csv file

2. Upload

http://www.iecsp.com/review-compare-php-shopping-cart.html

 

I am pondering whether to continue with Prestashop or move on to CubeCart (which is not free) or Magento which has a steep learning curve.

 

Anyway, thanks for the response

[zootalaws]

What I find strange is that if you export a CSV of products (the demo set, for example), you can't then reimport that same set - the CSV isn't in the right place...

 

Completely F.U'ed, IMO.

[hoppy]

What I find strange is that if you export a CSV of products (the demo set, for example), you can't then reimport that same set - the CSV isn't in the right place...Completely F.U'ed, IMO.

 

Prestashop makes a nice demo, but to actually DO something you need to be able to import products out of the box. Being free is not really free if it takes you 10 minutes each product to manually enter 3000+ products, or indeed to spend days looking for an answer to something that cannot be done.

 

I would happily pay for a module to do this.

 

Time to move on

Edited June 2, 2013 by hoppy (see edit history)

[Generaal]

Hello folks,

I have strungled also a lot of time to comes to the right settings for cvs proper import.

A example for the Cat and Subcat, I configured first in a spreadsheet, the data in seperated colums

 

ID Active (0/1) Name Parent Category Root category (0/1)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 1 Accessoires Home 0

4 1 Batterijen Accessoires 0

5 1 Opladers Accessoires 0

6 1 Sekstoys Accessoires 0

7 1 Sekstoys cleaning Accessoires 0

8 1 Anaal toys Home 0

9 1 Anaal beads Anaal toys 0

10 1 Body Art Home 0

11 1 Burlesque Body Art 0

 

 

After configurate it in the spreadsheet, save them as CVS file and give attention to the follow format:

 

unicode (UTP-8) and as seperator: ;

 

Su6

 

Best Regards,

Generaal

Edited June 2, 2013 by Generaal (see edit history)

[El plan de Dan]

Hello folks, I have strungled also a lot of time to comes to the right settings for cvs proper import. A example for the Cat and Subcat, I configured first in a spreadsheet, the data in seperated colums ID Active (0/1) Name Parent Category Root category (0/1) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 1 Accessoires Home 0 4 1 Batterijen Accessoires 0 5 1 Opladers Accessoires 0 6 1 Sekstoys Accessoires 0 7 1 Sekstoys cleaning Accessoires 0 8 1 Anaal toys Home 0 9 1 Anaal beads Anaal toys 0 10 1 Body Art Home 0 11 1 Burlesque Body Art 0 After configurate it in the spreadsheet, save them as CVS file and give attention to the follow format: unicode (UTP-8) and as seperator: ; Su6 Best Regards, Generaal

 

How can I save as you say from excel? I can't find UTP-8... Thanks!

 

Edit: I saved as UTF-8 nad review ID numbers. I could import only the first category, for two times, what more can be?

Edited June 5, 2013 by claramaria (see edit history)

[Denny.Louis]

Hi,

I had two sleepless nights working on this very issue, this is the most helpful link I have come across so far, It worked fine for me.

 

Great job @ Generaal

 

Regards

D. Louis

[mlibert]

Hi,

 

I've found that everything works OK if I ignore ID's (ignore this column). I've managed to import categories and subcategories all in one .csv file, with no errors.

 

Best regards,

 

MLibert

[jeepwhisperer]

I'm just about to start an import attempt, and noticed the lack of documentation or instructions, so I checked out this forum to see if anything was available... not yet I guess. I have a catalog of about 8000 parts to enter, and it's really not clear how this is done. Trial and error I guess.

 

If there are any instructions or references out there that we've missed, please let me know. I've got enough time into Prestashop that I'm not going to give up on it if it kills me!

[hoppy]

jeepwhisperer

 

After Prestashop I tried Magento which is slow and overcomplicated. I wasted a week on that and then settled for CubeCart which is not as complicated, and It has a free version that I keep going to try ideas out, but the paid version works vey well. Worth a shot if you get fed up with struggling with Prestashop. We have 1600 products and we able to import them all with the correct category/sub category from a csv file

 

Best regards

Hoppy

[tdc666]

old thread, but this is relevant. 

i was able to get the import feature working properly. i built my spreadsheet in google docs and saved as a cvs file. when i go to import it, i have to change the field separator from a semi colon to a comma and take the comma out of the multiple value separator field (i just stick a semicolon in there). if i want my assigned ID numbers to stick, i gotta check the force all ID's box. then i hit next step and preview my layout. 
i always forget to change the skip box from 1 to 0 (why does it default at 1? silly.), so i've taken to starting my cvs file on the second line in my spreadsheet so that get everything uploaded. this works great.

 

however, i need to have a lot of subcats with the same names under different parent cats. for example; we sell lights for motorcycles. "Light 1" is my parent cat with "BMW" "Ducati" "Honda" etc as my subcats, and then the different models as subcats under those, "GS1150" under "BMW", for example.

i compiled my spreadsheet taking all of that that into consideration, but the problem is we have four different lights and i need to have the same subcats under all four parent cats. the first subcat "BMW" will show up under all four parent cats "Light 1", "Light 2", "Light 3" and "Light 4", but if i put "BMW" as the parent cat for "GS1150", it only shows up in the sub cat under the first light.

complicated enough for you?  

seeing as there are hundreds of motorcycle manufacturers that i have to have categories for and each of those mfgs have hundreds of different models, it gets pretty crazy trying to manually add in every cat and subcat. 

 

i don't know, it seems like i've gotten further than a lot of you in this thread, but i'm still running into problems. i hate to say it, but maybe it's time to go back to zencart. 

[jeepwhisperer]

This thread is indeed still relevant... I only have limited window of time I can use to try to figure out Prestashop, and don't have time to try switching to some other product... yet, but the ability to import a large number of products with all the structure necessary to make them searchable by the customer is absolute.  My needs are similar to yours, I'm selling automotive replacement parts so the structure I envision needs to categorize each part to a general product category, the make, model and year of the vehicle it can be used in... "Ignition system, Jeep, CJ7, 1983, 4.2L engine" for example.  It gets complicated because an individual part is often used in several vehicles for many years.

When I have some time I'll take a look at how far you got, and see if I can add anything.   Thanks!

[hoppy]

Hi Jeep whisperer

 

I switched to CubeCart. Fairly easy to figure out but like all of the "free" carts lack of documentation is a bit of a problem.

 

We have put our entire catalog into an MS Access 2007 database and generate CSVs from there. 

Once in the MS Access 2007 database we are able to generate CSvs for Amazon upload, CubeCat upload, and hopefully we will figure out how to upload to eBay.

 

The MS Access 2007 database makes it easy to update prices, descriptions etc

 

I may take a look at Prestashop in the future

[jeepwhisperer]

I should probably consider other options, but I'll give PrestaShop a bit more of an effort first.  Sites that require the type of organization I need for auto parts are all over the place, I can't believe that PS is incapable of the same, so there must be a way.  My product information is in a Filemaker database... ideally I'd find a way to serve a store directly from the database without hiring a developer or committing too much capital.  I have considered trying the Web Services capability to talk between my database and Prestashop, but documentation is lacking on both sides of this scheme. 

[Joe Germann]

Interesting topic ......  I have had our store under PrestaShop for about 2 years, before that OScommerce.  I have also evaluated Magento, Zen, and about 10 other eCommerce packages.  I think PrestaShop is about the best but like every other eCommerce package, the front end and back end interfaces did not fit our business model which relies on a "data centric" infrastructure across all of our business needs.

 

We are using Filemaker Pro for managing all of our products, customers, sales, purchases, and communications.  We also have an interface into QuickBooks, FTP and Image Processing plugins, and the MySQL OBDC connector.  I manage 100% of the Category and Product information on our PS store via Filemaker and the scripts/drivers we have developed.  Some of the really cool stuff is the image processing used to create the images we FTP to the server. As part of this we build all of the image records and directories that PS needs. I also have embedded a lot of SEO magic into the solution.

 

We also have parts of the customer and order database integrated into our Filemaker world.  My intent is to also do a 100% integration into PrestaShop.

 

I can load any new product and all of the images with a single invocation of a Filemaker script. Everything is single button / script driven which make working with PrestaShop a non event.

 

So why PrestaShop and Filemaker together?  Filemaker is one of the best all around system sin which to build a business infrastructure upon.  It is easy to use and easy to learn how to write scripts. I like PrestaShop because it is a nice professional store front and customer interface.  I just don't want to use PS to run my business, I needed something a lot more robust.

 

Unfortunately I do not have the time or resource to properly package and document it for release and support even though it is designed with user mode / driver mode partitioning in mind. I might be interested in working with one or two people to look at the issues of integrating my work into another store with the hopes of eventually being able to release a supportable entity.

 

So ... If you are a sharp FileMaker and PrestaShop user, I may be interested in working with you on this project.

 

Regards,

Joe

[jeepwhisperer]

I may have mentioned this earlier in this thread... certainly did in others... but I also have all my data in Filemaker, and my ideal would be to link it directly to PrestaShop.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to make PS work for my needs, as spelled out above, and ended up setting it aside intending to return when I had more time, or information that would help me with my solution.  As a Filemaker user and part time developer since it first came out in the late '80's, I'm interested in seeing what you have.  Might be the incentive I need to get back into this...

[mds]

In every problem, there is that little thing that when found opens the way to solving the problem. Prestashop is fantastic, i just believe they havent spent time to write  a good tutorial on this. I have managed to put up something for you people here, i hope it helps.

[Vaupell]

Thanks for answering preserver I was beginning to think there was no one there ;-)

 

This does seem to be Prestashop's weak spot. I have seen it mentioned all over the web. No one gives a proper detailed explanation how to:

1. Prepare the csv file

2. Upload

http://www.iecsp.com/review-compare-php-shopping-cart.html

 

I am pondering whether to continue with Prestashop or move on to CubeCart (which is not free) or Magento which has a steep learning curve.

 

Anyway, thanks for the response

 

 

Well considering I'm bumping an old thread, this is very much an issue in 1.6.x still in 2014.

And looking at the comparison chart, I dont think Prestashop has changed or improved one bit since the review.

 

Importing is still such a bad and flawed part of prestashop, and I'm just guessing, but the people switching from presta 

is most likely because they have issues using the import feature..

 

I'm stuck now, helping a friend trying to import from a db looking like this...

 

AUDI 100 (44, 44Q, C3) 2.0 100 (44, 44Q, C3) (08.1982-07.1991)

Ofcourse its easy to automate the comma process in excel 2013 so it becomes this

AUDI, 100, 2.0, 08.1982-07.1991

 

But importing this as categories Make, Model, Engine and year is terrible, if not impossible

trying to make it browable

 

so you are able to click your way through the categories, tryed building the database like that

once before, but that cause prestashop to not work anymore, with a little more than 300.000 categories

it's unable to browse products in the admin panel..   making it useless.

 

I'm lost..  

[secrettreasures]

Hi Everyone.

 

Nice to meet you all. I have so far spent 3 sleepless nights and millions of searches on how to find out how to add subcategories. I have followed some of the examples that might off worked throughout the forum but still cant. I can not believe that this cant be done,

 

Does anyone have any idea?

 

I have attached a copy of something i want to add as subcategories but i dont know how.

 

Its suppose to follow this.

 

Root                  Category(37)                            Subcategory

Home                Homeware                               Bins

                                                                          Cooking

 

etc.

 

Please help

 

Thank you so much

 

[levis31cv]

hello,

do you have an example of importing categoies and subcategories ?

[ragnabt]

Hi

 

I haven´t read all of the answers in this thread so maybe someone has written this. 

 

I manage to import categories and products after a one night braintease with this, but regarding the categori import, then the parent category must come before the subcategory in the csv file, and the parent categories are referenced by name and not id 

 

Otherwise the subcategori can´t "know" which parent it has. 

 

 

Example of how the category import should look like. 

 

 

the following columns are

id, active, name,parent category,root,description,meta title, meta keywords, meta description, seo friendly-url,path to img

 

 

"1";"1";"Home";NULL;"0";"Description";"meta title";"meta keywords";"meta description";"friendly url";"http://pathtoimg/image.jpg"

"5";"1";"Category 2";"Home";"0";"Description";"meta title";"meta keywords";"meta description";"friendly url";"http://pathtoimg/image.jpg"

 

 

It´s a good idea to divide your import to smaller bits instead of importing one big file, especially when there are many rows. I divided my products to bits of 200 rows at a time.

 

I exported/importet from ver 1.4.7 to 1.6.0.14

 

Don´t give up yet, it can be done

Edited August 7, 2015 by ragnabt (see edit history)