Easy Populate question

[mrbuzzsaw]

okay i notice there are several flavors of Easy Populate.
so the question is what do i want???
i haven't a clue what to choose. so can anyone clarify??

Easy Populate 1.2.5.5 with Stock With Attributes

Easy Populate CSV

Easy Populate Free - from langer / modhole

Easy Populate From osc

Easy Populate langer 1.2.5.5 for Group Price Per Item 1.3.2

is there a better solution?

thanks in advance...

[Crunch]

I use Easy Populate Free - from langer / modhole v1.2.5.5.
NOTE: Some users recommend using an older version which is v1.2.5.4.

The Easy Populate Wiki contains some good information and the support thread can be found here.

[mrbuzzsaw]

i notice a paid version what is different about that?

[mrbuzzsaw]

i installed it and it looks to me installed. my main question is this

this is one of the sheets easy kicked out

v_products_model v_categories_name_1 v_categories_name_2 v_categories_name_3 v_categories_name_4 v_categories_name_5 v_categories_name_6 v_categories_name_7

now i have a spread sheet called
Category_Structure.xls
it contains the following fields

code New Cat1 New Cat2 New Cat1
1X Bags & Can Liners Can Liners Drawstring
1B Bags & Can Liners Can Liners High-Density


the first field is the code that links the product to the category "v_products_model"

should i replace code with
v_products_model??

i also have real part numbers for all items i am just trying to understand how to link products to categories.




any help would be appreciated!

Thanks



every file kicked out from easy populate has the starting field of

[rstevenson]

The way I learned to use EP was to create a few products in ZC manually, then I used EP to download all the files so I could view them in Excel. Using them as examples I then filled in more data for more products and uploaded the new data. It took a few tries but it worked.

Rob

[mrbuzzsaw]

that is what i was planning on doing how do i make it pull those populated files?

[mrbuzzsaw]

these seem to be my options


Download EP and Froogle Files

Download Complete tab-delimited .txt file to edit (Attributes Not Included)
Download Model/Price/Qty tab-delimited .txt file to edit
Download Model/Category tab-delimited .txt file to edit
Download Froogle tab-delimited .txt file
Download Model/Attributes tab-delimited .txt file


the
Download Model/Price/Qty tab-delimited .txt file to edit

has a couple of attributes in it but the rest is not populatd

[Crunch]

If you have a new store, manually add a few products to your new store and then choose:
Download Complete tab-delimited .txt file to edit (Attributes Not Included)

This gives you a template to build from when you want to mass add new products or mass update existing products.

Be sure to check out the Easy Populate Wiki and the readme.txt file. Both of those helped me when first using this contribution.

[schoolboy]

The BASIC rule for attempting to import existing data into zencart (data that is in a spreadsheet that has "alien" column headers and thus a possibly different assembly of the data fields) is to first understand the Zencart structure. And people are pointing you to my WIKI, which I hope will give you a better understanding of EP1.2.5.4 .

After you have gotten a grasp of what EP does for the Products Table(s) in zencart, you can then look at your existing sheet, to see how it will need to be re-organized (and possibly re-shaped) for essential data to go into zencart.

I fully agree that (after you have installed and configured EP - I would recommend 1.2.5.4 or 12.5.5) you should add a few products to your zenshop in the NORMAL WAY - ie: via the shop's Admin Console.

Then... do a EP dump of your data, open the file in a spreadsheet, and see how it has arranged the product data you added earlier.

Then, look at that spreadsheet you are hoping to use...

There may, for example, be PRODUCT DESCRIPTION DATA stretching across several columns. In zencart, such data is all housed in ONE field (column).

In my earlier days, I worked on a site for an education equipment supplier. Their product description data was housed in SEVERAL fields on the company database:-

[Overall Description] - [Curriculum Reference] - [Key stage] - [Specifications]

Now, zencart does NOT have fields for:
[Curriculum Reference] - [Key stage] - [Specifications]

so I had to work out a way of JOINING UP the data in these additional fields, so that they became part of the Overall description.

Now, if you know MSExcel, then you would JOIN UP all this data using Excel's CONCATENATE(xxxx) forumla...