Quote Originally Posted by rickiesdiscount View Post
Anyway im not using backslashes under the category discription if u look its a foward slash...
Forward Slash, Back Slash... term is irrelevant. These are restricted characters and are the cause of your categories problem.

Quote Originally Posted by rickiesdiscount View Post
that is the way the distributor gives me the information it cannot be changed i have 22,000 products from them it would take to long.
I get a similar list from my drop-shipper who ALSO describes the categories using slashes.

This is what I do:-

1. Open the list in excel.

2. Highlight the CATEGORIES COLUMN (where the backslashes/forwardslashes appear).

3. COPY to clipboard

4. Open MS Word

5. PASTE

6. (Now I have that column in a table in MS Word).

7. HIGHLIGHT THE WHOLE TABLE, then under MS Word menu "Table", select "Convert Table to Text.

8. Now I have the table as a list of "sentences" delimited by Paragraphs.

9. Use EDIT REPLACE - (tell MS Word to find / and relpace with ^t)

10. This replaces all slashes with a TAB.

11. Highlight all text, and go back to "Table" menu at the top, and now "Convert Text to table, using TABS to delimit columns.

12. I now have all my categories and sub-categories in their required columns

13. CTRL+A (select all) , the COPY

14. Go back to Excel and PASTE

15. Adjust excel columns and headers to suit EAsyPopulate...

For 22,000 products this will take about 20 minutes.

My list is routinely about 12,500 to 13,000 products and it takes me this amount of time to "repair" the layout.


Quote Originally Posted by rickiesdiscount View Post
I really appreciate the help and advice though but im almost positive this isnt whats causing it.
I'm sure it is what's causing it... sorry to disagree!

Good Luck.