We've gotten several reports of problems with the sort order on Categories. We're working on an update. I'll also see if we can get the tool exporting categories with products and also investigate support of "-" in the SKU number field.

I experienced the problem with categories after I tried to use the tool to update a batch of existing categories. I ended up going into the category table and manually resorting the category sort order - not easy with over 300 categories. I also experienced errors with using the tool to update products, ending up with fields in the product table that were over-written with zeros, then to find it was impossible to use the tool to update the over-written field. I believe at least part of that was fixed with the last release.

Now...I use it only to load products and categories - never to update. Last night I tried uploading 350 products using the tool, of which about 200 failed. I reviewed each line and found several examples where the only difference between one product that failed and one that loaded was the prodName and SKU. Every product had the Bvin set to "new". I tried again to get the others to load, getting an error failure report from the tool. This morning I used the admin menu to manually delete all the products that had loaded successfully and tried it again. This time, a different set of products loaded successfully, but again only about 30% were accepted.

I decided to try to add one of them that didn't load correctly and have found that I could not even load it manually through the admin menu. I hoped it was an issue with the sku or another field that may not allow duplicates, but after an hour of failed attempts I decided to try to add a "test1" product hoping to figure out what was happening. Much to my dismay, I now find the store will not allow me to add products through the admin menu. To see if it was an issue with the dBase connection I added a test category, and that worked.

I am now locked out of adding products to my site. I add products in batches of 50-500 at a time, so manual add is not a solution. I was hoping to move from a competitor's shopping cart to BV5 within a couple of months but without the import tool I am just wasting my time troubleshooting errors. I have no clue how to overcome the issue with adding products to the site.

At this point I am tempted to start over with the dBase since it appears the tool is corrupting the file in some way(s), but with over 500 categories and 2000 products loaded I am not aware of options for getting my store operational without the import tool. Does anyone have any suggestions for moving the 15000 products I have from my current store to BV5 without the headache?

Marcus,

Is there any estimate on when some of these issues will be fixed with import tool or is this back burner for you guys right now?

Hello Marcus,

Does the tool currently support importing of manufacturer & vendor data? I did not see this feature in the manual. Will there be support for these in upcoming releases of this tool?

I've been working on some updates for the import tools. The SF6 to BVC5 tool should be ready next week and I hope to have an update for the flat file import tool late next week.

Updated to version 1.2 to correct errors with category sort order during updates.

* NOTE: Version 1.2 will only work with service pack 2 or later of BV Commerce 5.

We've gotten several suggestions for this type of feature and are evaluating the possibility of incorporating it in a future release.

Hi folks, I've tested the import/export tool with great success but what I can't work out from this thread is whether there is support within the tool (at the moment) for product choices or not. The 'parentID' column and Marcus' coments about the fact that it is only used if a product is actually the variant of another product (its parent) leads me to believe that there is support but others' comments about choices rather imply it isn't.

I've exported test products that have various customer choices and I certainly don't see the choices appearing in the output as rows with parentID's.

Is the parent ID something totaly different? - If so, how's progress going on an import/export tool that supports variants? - My new client's store has 5k products that I need to import (so the tool is GREAT) but most have variants which is leaving me a bit stuck for now. I can't see anything in the manual about choices either but if someone knows otherwise please point me in the right direction!

Thanks for the great work on the tool so far though.

Matt

I was wondering if anyone successfully using an import/export utility. What I did is: I have run the EXPORT option to create a file to make sure I have correct top field names and added new data to the existing products in the same file. When I run/import same file with the added data, most of the fields don’t get updated in the database. Fields like: Long Description, small images URL, medium image URL, keywords…. Original products is OK but not the new ones

Edited by user Monday, March 4, 2013 5:32:33 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Marcus, would it be possible to have the source files for this import tool? I am working on linking an existing system to the BvCommerce database and the import tool source would provide plenty of webreference example coding for me to use and learn from. Thanks.

Dan