AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

In version 5.5 I used to be able to update all the prices and descriptions of my products by matching the sku field. I was told the Data Port can also do this but it is not working. Has anyone been able to do a batch update using this utility?

The only fields I am matching are Name,Price,MSRP,Sku

No errors are returned but it says 0 products updated. If I do a test update and include the ProductID it is successful. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing what the ProductID field is for each product in my list.

Batch update by SKU is possible, to do this you have to work in the following sequence:

1. Export selected products CSV (filtered by SKU).
2. Update the product fields as you want, except the product ID field.
3. Import the updated CSV back to store.

Here are steps in detail:

1. Using DataPort customized product download feature, select the option "Selected Products" from first screen.

2. Use the SKU filter to filter out products.

3. From next steps select CSV format and export the products data.

4. Edit the products data as you want. But leave the ProductID unchanged.

5. Import the modified products CSV data back to store using DataPort.

Thanks for the reply but unfortunately the way you described is going to cost us a lot of time. We have over 30,000 products so trying to manually key in the prices to a spreadsheet is not possible. We get daily price updates and stock levels from the manufacturer that have the same sku in our web site. In version 5.5 I was using the batch update to update the price, description, stock units, etc. Version 5.5 allowed us to update based on the productID or SKU and maybe some other fields.

I attempted trying to get Excel to merge fields but couldn't figure it out. I believe it doesn't do this unless you purchase an addon.

The data port utility is nice but seems to be lacking important features necessary for large stores. I know there are other people with more than 100,000 products so I find it hard to believe they are manually updating all their prices.

For now I will have to stick with version 5.5 or transfer my sites to another vendor. There are a few other features the data port is lacking but I won't list them here. Let me know when you get it working better.

Yes, updating by sku would be really nice, we have 250,000+ items in our website. it would be nice if there were a way to upload items and have them update by sku, or add new sku's which aren't present. Now i have to export a manufacturer, then import that file into M.S. Access along with a 2nd file i get from the manufacturer, then i can do a Unique query to compare the two tables, then i can export items which aren't in the able file and import only the new records. This works fine when adding new records, but not when doing product updates. That's an entirely different process.

There was a custom import that was written for version 5, but then again, there wasn't a dataport for version 5 either.

Also, with the dataport, why isn't there a way to export products by Manufacturer? vendor is there, but doesn't work the way it should. Manufacturer export would be waaaaay more useful.

There are some post about how process CSV's perhaps you can create your custom import routine for products.

Have a look at following posts
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=9720

I definitely agree that SKU's should be allowed to be used as the product key for imports. It would simplify migrations AND maintenance for stores that manage their own inventory warehouses (just about every business out there duh!). Not every organization cares or even knows about the AbleCommerce ProductID # so it becomes useless to humans.

bemara579 wrote:I definitely agree that SKU's should be allowed to be used as the product key for imports. It would simplify migrations AND maintenance for stores that manage their own inventory warehouses (just about every business out there duh!). Not every organization cares or even knows about the AbleCommerce ProductID # so it becomes useless to humans.

Sounds reasonable. I have logged this to be supported by DataPort.

Maybe make it an option to toggle. Some merchant use the same sku for variations of a product, like one by itself and one as a product with a kit attached and it wouldn't work to update by sku because of pricing differences.

I agree with Judy here. We have several clients that don't even use the SKU for products. These are usually smaller clients that only have a handful of products, but still... And we do have clients that do have the same SKU for various products, especially when they have strange rules for how Options work or display for products. Making match on SKU and/or Product ID a toggle would be good, but don't force one or the other.

For now if some one want to update products form a CSV by using Sku he/she can try following custom CSV import. With this custom import you wont be able to update following data from CSV. If you want to include this information as well you can update import routine to take care of these fields as well.

First you need to upload CSV file to website App_Data folder and then Go Admin/Import/, specify CSV file name including extension for example Product.csv etc and click import button.

In order to install files extract attachment and place files in same order in your website.

Note: It may corrupt your data so don't forget to take database backup.

The process of updating items by sku would be soooooo much easier if it were just included as an option in the existing dataport, and would be especially useful for the majority of us who use SKU to identify an item.

I have already created a request to support this in DataPort here
http://bugs.ablecommerce.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7916