copy / clone product listing v.1.5.4

I'm very definitely a newbie, so please forgive if I ask something that you think should be obvious.

Never done anything like this in my life, so here goes.

Managed to get the install done after a couple of attempts and also started to add/edit Categories and Products.

Now I realise the huge job ahead unless there is a shortcut I can't find. I'm in the process of adding all the products under one category but if I have to do this for all categories, even just adding the products in each category will take a big effort, I'll be there forever, one category alone will probably take me weeks if I have to add everything manually line by line.

I have looked but can't workout how to go about copying/cloning sections, so I can make some kind of template ( not a template but I hope you know what I mean) like section to paste into the areas I want.

cheers
Haggis

If I'm understanding your question correctly, you're looking for a way to have a "boilerplate" product that you can use as the basis for new products' definition.

I usually do this by creating a category named Boilerplate and then a product (or products) within that category that contain that "boilerplate" layout. I keep both the category and associated products disabled.

Then, when it's time to create a new product, I navigate through the Catalog->Categories/Products to the listing that contains my boilerplate products and click the Copy To button (usually accompanied by a dark-blue circle with a white C, but Super Orders modifies this).

From the Copy To screen, then choose the category in which the new product is to be created, choose Duplicate product so there's a brand-new product created and, if the product has attributes, choose whether to copy those attributes to the newly-created product. Click the *Copy *button and you're off to make product-specific tweaks to that new product.

Kind of, except I don't want to just copy a single product I want to copy all the products under one category into another.

For example if I was selling nuts and bolts. they could have 10 different material types(categories), 20 different sizes and 10 different thread types corresponding nuts and so on. they each have different costs, weights & shipping would be different etc. It's a lot easier to edit parts of each product than to enter all individually.

I did try that copy button yesterday but it cut rather than copied. and I couldn't see how to paste it back

This has been solved, thanks for helping lat9