how do mass delete all products from one manufacturer?

[alibaba99]

hi, not sure how to do this and i wanted to know if there is an easy way to have all products (which are spread across a range of my categories) from just one of my manufaturer, all delleted at the same time.

is it as simple as just deleing the manufacturer from the list?

any help please

mark

[Soniccc]

I don't think it's actually possible to delete the way you described. If you don't want to delete manually you could try using easy populate (it'll take you some time to learn how to use it, but it'll be worth it).

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34970

/soniccc

[alibaba99]

thanks for reply. not surte where on that thread link to look for the answer as its 102 pages long.

I use easy populate to upload csv so i understand it a little, but how do i use it to manipulate deleting the producst all from one of the manufacturers?

[alibaba99]

I have ahd a thought? would this work.
download csv file of all products.
on excel, filter out the products wity only the manufature i want to delete.
add a dummy category for all the products to appear in.
upload all of these via csv file using easy populate, which should only update each product into the new category.
then perhaps, i can just delet ethat new category???

Would any of the old information still reside on the old categories, or linked to other categories?

would that work?

[kamion]

You could try to fashion an SQL query that will delete it for you from the tables.

Is it just a general product type? Or have you got extra customised SQL tables for your products?

If it's just a general product type without extra SQL tables, then you can simply run this line (but change the "manufacturers_id" number 2 to match the one you want to delete):

DELETE FROM products WHERE manufacturers_id = '2'; 

You run this from the admin page Tools->Install SQL Patches.

Do make a backup of your SQL database before hand though!

Edit: Actually, that would leave the products_description entries.

[Ajeh]

This would be a bad idea as there are many tables involved with Products ...
products
products_description
specials
featured
reviews
etc. etc. etc.

[kamion]

Ajeh, please remove my previous post. :) Thanks.

[Ajeh]

Actually it is a good post to help people understand that there is more to a Product than just the products table and to not delete them in that manner or they will run into major issues ...

[Kevin205]

So how do you mass delete old products? Do you really have to delete one at a time?

Furthermore, if you delete one by one, or possibly mass delete (let say 200 products); would the remaining record id's create a problem? When year after year you create newer and delete old products? Can the table be somehow compacted?

[schoolboy]

So how do you mass delete old products? Do you really have to delete one at a time?

Furthermore, if you delete one by one, or possibly mass delete (let say 200 products); would the remaining record id's create a problem? When year after year you create newer and delete old products? Can the table be somehow compacted?

No need to "compact" anything... the ID is just an auto-increment and is a database's way of assigning a unique identifier to a record.


If you use Easy Populate, you will see a column called v_status.

There are THREE possible variables for this column:-

1 = Product is active and visible
0 = Product is inactive and hidden (such as when product is out of stock)
9 = Delete product

So if you create an Easy Populate spreadsheet of ONLY the products you want removed, and in the v_status column you put the digit - " 9 " against each product, then run that through easy populate - it will delete the products AND THEIR IMAGES...

If you want to keep the images, then make a backup off the server.