Updating products using feed file

I wonder if someone with a bit more know how than me could help with some ideas for a problem that may help other too.

I get supplied a feed from my supplier that I convert to a format uploadable using easy populate. This works well for adding new products and updating ones that are included in the feed. Any products that are discontinued by the supplier are not in the feed supplied to me.

This presents a problem that discontinued products that are existing on my shop are still present after the easypopulate upload. Are there any ideas of a way to find the products in my shop that are not in the feed and delete them.

I did use one way which was a disaster, that was to clear down the shop completely and upload the feed, but this caused a complete disaster with my google indexing, as all the page references were lost.

Any ideas appreciated.

Regards
Laurie

I would probably go about this using excel to detirmine what products exist already, its a bit clunky , but i dont trust my T-sql skills to write it out automated.

This is theory only , but download your file from easy populate with your current stock , and copy your new file to upload into the same workbook , under a new sheet.

Then do a compare using the product model to see if they exist in the new one and setting the product.

do this by creating a column that compares the model number by using VLOOKUP in excel , if the number exists , normally it will return the column you specify , but by using a IF ISNA statement you can tell if it exists as it will return #NA if no product exists , you can then tidy this up using a statment a bit like this.

=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(A1,Sheet1!A1:A101,1,FALSE)),"0","1")

Which says if cell A1 is the same as any cells in Sheet1 column A then return 1 else return 0 . this should sort out which products you have / dont have.

Then do a copy , paste special , values only to replace your "is live" column

Sorry for the waffle !

Mark.