installing categories via csv files with easypopulate?

[njpbusiness]

!]I have a new installed v155f, with ckeditor, easypopulate 4 running on linux with latest php.
I am trying to install categories and products via csv files but nothing seems to install?.
the files are as follows:
zen_categories
zen_category_description
zen_products
zen_products_categories
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?, do I need to install them in a specific order?, or do I need to alter something in the files?, apparently these files are produced to work with zencart and I assumed I could just import them via the easypopulate?.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[mc12345678]

With EP4, the filename is important, at least the first part of the filename up to the part that has ep. The importance is associated with which "filter" to apply to it.

To add categories, first product needs to be imported using any filename (a filename that doesn't match any of the specific prefixes is treated as if product is being imported).

Then once the category exists, the category specific type file can be used to populate the category description.

The suggested method of accomplishing this is to first export a file that contains the data to be created/edited. This gives a basic layout of the fields and data within them. Then the file can be edited and saved changing the date related suffix to something else, preferably without spaces. The file uploaded and then imported to cause the update.

[njpbusiness]

Thank you, I have tried this without success, I have to add that I am actually blind and so can only listen to input which is not helping me very much.
The files given to me by my drop ship company are like follows:
zen_products_description
zen_products_categories
zen_products
zen_category_description.csv.e10xqts
zen_category_description
zen_categories

All of this is very confusing to me and I assumed all I needed to do is upload them but will not seem to install them , has anyone got any suggestions as how to get this running please?.

[mc12345678]

Sighted or not, it can be confusing but I can tell then that I likely need to write with intention. If I may, I'd like to try to explain a little about the Zen Cart system and then how the data to be entered into it interfaces.

Generally speaking, there are three main objects of concern to support the program. There are products, there are customers, and there are orders where orders are made up of products purchased by people.

Each of those groups have the possibility of other important information being related. In your case you are working with the products. So, what generally makes up a product?

Well, there are some basic things, like a product has a name, a description, a price and many other things. If products were all offered in one listing and one language with no frills, then everything would be super easy. For a small store it may be fine for all product to be listed in one listing, but in most cases it is desirable to categorize each product. So this introduces categories. One other part about that though is that basically once categories are introduced, it becomes important to know to what category a product belongs. There are actually other reasons for this as well like the fact that sales are applied to categories while specials are applied to product. For that reason and some "sanity" product are really only assigned to one category but can be shared (called linked) to other categories.

So, how does all this factor into your issue? Well, because there are so many details available to define something, in order for the import of data to be efficient and not cause too much of a headache to determine why the final result is not as expected, the data needs to be imported with the appropriate group so that the program processing the data knows what to expect and what to do.

Easy Populate Version 4 (EP4) determines the processing path by the first part of the filename and then by the fields that are present in the file. The fields are the column designator in the first row of data.

To know what fields are expected of the product import file, simply export a product file and the fields included in that file are automatically supported for import. From there an import file can be put together that contains the desired data for import. Now, the other tidbit not yet described is that every record to be imported needs to match up with a record in the database. The "historical" method of doing this is through the use of the products_model field. To do that though, each record should have a unique products_model designation. This way an update to the record(s) that have a matching products_model only updates the record(s) that match. To support that further/a different way, the products_id has also been made available to use as a primary key. The products_id is expected to be unique for all product unless some specific modifications have been made in almost the entire program.

Anyways, when a product record has a category assigned that doesn't exist in the database, then the category is created. For EP4, an "end" category is identified by placing a carat (^) between each category name. So if you had shoes that were men's and in a clothing category it would be like: clothing^mens^shoes. After the category has been created, then the description information related to the category can be entered/uploaded.

Now the issue is, what data/fields exist in each of the five files identified? Knowing what field(s) are present would make it easier to advise a way to put the data together (if necessary) to support import.

[njpbusiness]

Thank you for taking time out to give me this explanation of the systems and I now realise the depth of the information required.
Here is a break down given to me by the drop ship company:

Cart Software Population

Populate Cart Software
Feeds that will enable you to populate a basic implementation of popular cart software such as OSCommerce or ZenCart.
Zen Cart Feeds
Zen Cart Categories
Notes:- This feed assumes category status to be 0/1 format, do a find/replace to change the column to y/n if required.

Zen Cart Category Description
Notes:- Please be aware that the category descriptions will mention the word Dropship, please edit text to your requirements before uploading.

Zen Cart Products
Notes:- this feed selects all products with a stock level of 12 or more and the Image field does not hold the full path to our website, please cater for this in your scripts.

Zen Cart Product Descriptions

Zen Cart Product to Category mappings

This endss the feeds they have provided and I note that I should edit some information provided to remove certain words and most likely will need to direct products to graphics and also hopefully can also install software to do markup on mass accross all products.
If I can not upload these files myself I may need someone to do this part for me if you know anyone who could do this for me at a reasonable cost?.
Any help or advice is welcome.