Importing a product spreadsheet into a new store

I have a question about importing products in a fresh install of ZC 1.5 using phpMyAdmin. This is a new store. Not an upgrade. What's the best way to do this?

I have a spreadsheet including the product model, description, prices, weight and product name and the URL's to the photo's for that item, category it's in, and also spreadsheet for the cat name, products to cats etc.

In the past I was using Navicat and it worked great, I could copy and paste entire columns into the products and products to cats tables and such via navicat, worked AOK.

Now I am using phpMyAdmin to do backups and import and export, so was wondering what would be the best way to do this with phpMyAdmin.

Can anyone direct me to either a FAQ or howto or Link, hints on importing in this way with phpMyAdmin?

Thanks for any info.

The way I've done it, was to install Easy populate (http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=190417) and then paste the data from my spreadsheet into the one generated by easy Populate.

Mike_B1

I use Apsona for bulk imports using a CSV file made from an Openoffice spreadsheet (so you can determine the CSV character set, unlike Excel).

or, there is Easypopulate.

Oh thanks Mike_B1 I totally forgot about easy populate. I'll install the mod.

I'll check out Apsona too torvista thanks U2.

BTW, what's the difference between Aspona and Easy Populate? One has more features or capabilities?

Apsona is developed by a company,
the code is downloaded every time you use it (so offline local development work is not possible),
it has import/export for anything you want,
it has extensive/customisable reporting options,
you can talk to the company and they can customise your version of downloaded code (within reason),
support is excellent.

Easypopulate is a community-supported add-on mainly for product import/export and is sufficient for most needs.