The BV Commerce 5 Flat File Import/Export tool is designed to let store owners easily import new item, update existing items and export current items. The tool currently supports working with Categories, Products and Users. The program will ready tab delimited text files for imports and updates and will generate tab delimited text files for export.

Requirements
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or later must be installed on your computer
• Windows Operating System (XP, 2003 Server, Vista, etc.)
• Internet Access to your store’s web site

Installation
1) Download the BVC5-ImportTool-Version1.zip file from the user forums at http://www.bvsoftware.com/forums/
2) Unzip the downloaded file into any folder on your computer. If you need an unzip program you can try www.winzip.com or www.7-zip.com
3) That’s it!
*** IMPORTANT ***
You should always make a full and complete backup of your database before running any import/update operations. There is no "undo" feature for an import or update.

Dan,

I'd suggest reading the full user manual before using this tool.

1) The input files must be tab delimited
2) Depending on the import there are a couple of required fields. For products they are "bvin","parentid" and "sku"

Marcus,

It worked great! Imported 4,617 products without a glitch.

The file format is different from BV4. You can "export" first to get a sample template.

I just exported my data, the "parentid" field was blank. i'm assuming all three fields (product id in all 3) must be the same when i upload?

bvin = a computer generated unique code that looks something like bbf32-a209f-ac44e-5289c-cdd21
sku = your stock keeping unit or item code (i.e. ABC123)
parentid = the bvin of another product if this is a choice that belongs to some other product

I have been using the tool and I am experiencing an issue that could affect your data. I have found no problems with the tool when I upload a new product file with a Bvin value="new" - all fields in the file import to the database accurately.

If I export the product file using the tool and use the file with the Bvin values assigned by the database, then modify a field and import the data back into the store's database, it zeroes fields such as cost, price, weight/length/width/height, ship from location and a few others. The tool does not work when I try to modify a field using the import tool.

I have also tried using the minimum fields specified to modify the sku, where the file was limited to a Bvin, ParentId and Sku field. It modified the sku field and zeroed all other fields even though they were not included in the file import. It may be limited to a specific BV5 release or could be me.

I recommend you test the import tool on a couple of products or in a test environment.

I emailed Nick and believe they are looking at the issue.

I am getting the following error when trying to log in for export:

Login failed for uers admin. I am using the same userid and password as for the bvadmin site

Attached is the text of the error

I have downloaded and tried out your import/export tool for both products and categories. It works very well except for one thing - the sort order.

After importing categories, I found that I can no longer go into admin and change the sort order of the categories. When I went directly into the SQL database, I manually changed the sort order and that worked fine. However, when I reimported using the import tool, the sort order was reset again and I could no longer change it in admin again.

There seems to be no sort order field in the .txt file (I originally exported it to get the format correct).

Am I doing something wrong? Any suggestions would be welcome.

Jenny

I have unfortunately experienced the same fate as jbailey when trying to update several category fields. I have 360 categories that are now in a new order and I am unable to use the manual sort command (as painful as that will be) to move the categories back into the correct order.

I limited the file update to the following fields: Bvin, ParentId, Name, ShowInTopMenu, SourceType, TemplateName and MetaTitle. Everything updated okay except now the categories are all in different orders and the manual sort capability does not work in the admin menu.

Also, I have found that the product update does not work correctly for the categories field. Even if you place "empty" in the categories field it will not delete the existing category value. If you place a new category Bvin value in the field it adds it to the categories value.

If you have a large amount of categories or products in your store, be very careful with this tool when making updates. Export works great, but import/update requires extreme caution.