AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

We're evaluating 7.0 and trying to figure out how to migrate our 5.5 update process to 7.0

For each of our manufacturers, we have a separate excel sheet where all of the pertinent item information gets combined into one long customfield and then uploaded as a csv into 5.5

Now we see that 7.0 has completely changed this behavior, and it is now called a Product Template.

Can anyone that has made this move in a similar situation explain how they deal with this change to update their products with csv uploads?

We have no idea where to put the old customfields information now for updating.

ok... can we be the only ones that updated our custom fields in 5.5 with csv that are wondering how to update products in 7.0?

I believe the Able 5 custom fields get changed to templates when an Able 5 store is imported. Then to update them later using the dataport utility , you would have to use an xml product import instead of a csv because it is hierarchical data.
There are custom fields in Able 7, but there is no admin interface for them yet.
This post on a custom csv import routine might help:
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=9720

For AC55 to AC7 migration, we have created a step by step migration guide:
http://help.ablecommerce.com/upgrades/A ... erce_7.htm

This is a must read before planning to migrate.

Regarding Custom fields:

Custom Fields

Product Custom Fields are imported as Product Templates. If you have created custom fields for AC55 products, these will be imported and found under Catalog > Product Templates. In AbleCommerce 7, you can now create a single product template and apply it to many products. During import, each product's custom fields are checked so that unique product templates are created and assigned to all the products that they were previously a part of.