Managing my products quickly

I am using Zen Cart v1.5.0, and I need to be able to edit product prices, descriptions, etc. MUCH faster than through admin (unless there is something that I am not aware of in the existing Zen Cart tools).. I have found the plugin 'Excel Populate for Zen Cart' , which seems to be what I need, but I am not sure. I can download my database as an .sql file from my server to my computer, but it has way too much information in it for me to get through and I really don't understand how to edit it and upload it anyway.

Let me explain what I want to do, and will someone tell me if this plugin will do the trick, or if perhaps there is another one that will work....

Here's what I need to be able to do.

I am managing about 1500 - 2000 products on this current site, some of which the prices, descriptions, discontinued status, etc. get changed several times a year. I want to be able to get the product data into a spreadsheet format (Excel - preferred) and have the ability to Change/Edit the ,,,, Price, Name, Description, in stock qty, weight, photo name,  etc,,,, as well as the ability to delete the product. I would like to be able to do the editing on my computer and re-upload database,, but if I have to do it 'in' the server, while online, that would be better than nothing.. 

I have managed databases before on custom built websites and I believe that this is the only way I am going to be able to manage a website of this size. The more fields that I can edit the better, but what I really need is description, price and weight at the very least. 

What I REALLY need is a column that I can put my wholesale COST in, and have another column with a markup percentage in it, with the result 'ending up' in the retail column... If I can just get my products into an Excel spreadsheet with the ability to upload the changed database back to my site, I can make my own wholesale cost and markup columns that make a retail column. In retail column 'save file as' special, eliminating the formula and just leaving the retail price as hard numbers in the retail column. Any help/advice would be great!! I am open to any suggestions. Thank you in advance......

Why not just go into phpmyadmin, export the products_description table as an XML file, edit it, then re-upload it.

Johnnycopilot:

I am using Zen Cart v1.5.0, and I need to be able to edit product prices, descriptions, etc. MUCH faster than through admin

EasyPopulate V4 by Chadderuski does this nicely.

Recently, we have been using APSONA SHOPADMIN which has a fantastic array of tools and filters, export & import, etc features.

We recently brought in over 3500 product attributes (names and values) into a DB and we managed the whole thing in under 20 seconds.

I would not advocate messing around in the database directly - neither via SQL commands, nor through phpMyAdmin... There is too much that can go wrong.

Apsona, for example, will allow you to import/update info via virtually any valid spreadsheet (xls, csv, txt) and will FIRSTLY VERIFY your actions before it commits to the database. If it sees errors, it alerts you first.

A great tool, and FAR easier and FAR safer than SQL updates.

Thanks for the replies from both of you, and thanks for my Schooling.. The rest of this post is for people that don't know very much, like me..

Here's what I did, and the result is fantastic so far... Based on one of Schoolboy's suggestions, I installed APSONA SHOPADMIN. It was SOOOOOOO Easy to install, and ALL of the files have the apsona name in them, and don't overwrite any existing Zen Cart files.. I then installed the Apsona Shopadmin Zen-Cart V1.5.0 update. It overwrites 2 files from the original install... and walla!!! Done!! For the time being, this program has WAY more features than I need for database editing, but the other features seem to be very good and keep up with things like purchase statistics,, etc... I haven't figured out very many of the basics yet, but I am already editing my product fields in Excel with no problem. An example of something I haven't figured out yet is this... If I do a filter search of a Category, it adds all of the products that are in that master category, but the products that have links to other categories don't get edited.. I guess because all of the linked category names are part of the product category name too, and the search filter I am using is only for a single category name; but I have only been using this program for 30 minutes or so,,,, However, I can easily export ALL of the products and get to the products that have links to other categories that way.. I'm sure I will be able to figure out how to use the filters better in a few days, that's just a minor detail..

If you go to the apsona website, there is a VERY helpful tour.. there is a tutorial for several, if not all, of the features... for example,, the one thing that I needed to do has a video tutorial, and I was editing my website products within a few minutes after the install... However, it will not work in IE8, so I am using Firefox and it is working.

Once again, the Zen Cart Community came through for me.... you guys and girls are great... Thanks :)

clarification:: When I said > Johnnycopilot:

I then installed the Apsona Shopadmin Zen-Cart V1.5.0 update. It overwrites 2 files from the original install...
I mean that the Apsona ShopAdmin update overwrites 2 files from the original APSONA SHOPADMIN install.. it doesn't overwrite any Zen Cart files..

Use apsona to EXPORT your current product data to a CSV or MSExcel file. Then you can see the formatting.

There are also video tutorials on Apsona.

If understand this correct, I should be able to export all my products and then just keep the ones I want to change and then upload those back after I have made updates