Quote Originally Posted by amandavz View Post
Hi mc...so I went through an entire process and it seems to all work just fine. Now that I understand the formula. I deleted all of the existing product from the site and started fresh with new products, by adding them via the Full-EP, then I added the basic attributes and then the detailed attributes, went through the checkout and was redirected to the site for my downloads. Worked like a charm. Thanks so much again for all your help.

I do have another question for you...if I want to add "new" products to the Full-EP list (I have like 7,000 on another site) should I delete the existing information loaded onto the spreadsheet and start with my new products or do I leave them all and then add my new products to the bottom? I am scared I might screw something up if they are on the list. Also, the same with the Basic & Detailed csv files? Delete and upload or just add and upload?

Thanks again. :)
So, I would say that is a bit of a personal choice, which may be swayed based on a number of factors. First and foremost, you should always make a backup of your database before making changes such as what this plugin does. So, regardless of what is in the datafile, you should be able to come back to what you had. Now, other things about which way to go could include, as you said the possibility of making a mistake by changing something that is "older" and should not have been changed, if a single filename is used and "backups" are not maintained, a mistake in the future may not be noticed until it is way too late, storing the same information again and again on the server in the same file type will use ever more and more space, having a single file that contains all of the recent information will/could help in the future, splitting the files up and including some sort of date/time info can help make sense of it all.

Personally though, I would take the safest quickest route. I would remove all of the "old" data from the one spreadsheet, incorporate the new (though if you download the info from the other site, there really is no "new"/"old" to worry about. But, I would temporarily merge the two files or perform some other verification to ensure that the model numbers were different between the two sets of data, make necessary changes to the new data, and then upload the whole new thing.

After that, well, have to perform a sort of risk assessment. Just remember, you're probably doing this to make some sort of money, so whatever keeps you in business, minimizes time away from that, and minimizes duplicattion of effort.

Btw, glad that you got it sorted out. It really does work well. :)