Data migration and avoiding duplication of records

[amandanelson]

We need to import CSV of 16000 records into Able Commerce and I wondered if anyone has used this utitlity....my main question is not on data mapping but whether there is provision within the utility that recognises duplicate records/details and allows us to choose or specify which ones to retain or delete. Thanks

[AbleMods]

You haven't specifically mentioned a particular data import utility, so I assume you're referring to the Able Dataport utility.

So far as I know, the only duplication check performed is based on the ProductId field value. If you are uploading new products without any existing products loaded in the AC7 store catalog, no duplicate-checking will be performed since no ProductId values exist.

I recommend that you clean the data prior to importing into the store.

[amandanelson]

Thanks for that. We have customers that have elected NOT to have an account but we have their details so it is possible for one customer to have purchased from us numerous times. Appreciate the response though and yes it looks like we'll ned to clean by hand or use ACT or something similar as I believe you can elect to clear duplicates in that programme though don't know yet how sphisticated it is. If I find a great tool to achieve this I'll let you know!

[AbleMods]

Excel is actually quite clever at it.

Just set it up like a data spreadsheet and then sort/group the data on the primary key you want to be unique.

Then copy/paste the summarized (grouped) result into a new sheet and export that sheet. Should give you a nice, clean unique list based on your primary key and it's exportable to CSV for import.