AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

I purchased ablecommerce and the tech support line tells me to post to the forums. So far, I haven't received any help. I am trying to upload data to the database. Using Dataport, I uploaded some data which had about 400 go to orphaned items. I went and fixed some items. When I went to upload again, all of the items went to orphaned. What basically happened is that the items didn't get updated. All of the items in the second upload went to the orphaned. I am reinstalling everything. Can someone give me pointers on how to use dataport. I choose the import/update radial button.

Able commerce provides a complete guideline how to use data port. Check this out
http://wiki.ablecommerce.com/index.php/DataPort_Utility

good peeps wrote:When I went to upload again, all of the items went to orphaned.

Usually products are marked as orphaned if product don't have any category mentioned, So i guess you are missing something regarding categories.

Thanks for the reply. I believe that the dataport utility is riddled with bugs. For example, I have managed to get products into the database after playing around with the data. I have then downloaded the data through the dataport utility and made changes to the sku column. I then try and upload the data using the default (productid) and I get nothing updated. I then select "name" as the match and I get the object instance error. I can't seem to update the database. I am using openoffice and don't see what else is going on.

Here is an output:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Update unsuccessful for Product
ProductId = 0
Name = xxxx
Error message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

at CommerceBuilder.Products.Product.set_CustomUrl(String value)
at CommerceBuilder.DataClient.Api.ObjectHandlers.ImportHandler.ao(Object& A_0, Object A_1)
at CommerceBuilder.DataClient.Api.ObjectHandlers.ImportHandler.a(Array A_0, Type A_1, String A_2, String A_3, String A_4, Object A_5, w A_6, f A_7, c A_8, e A_9, String A_10)

Base Exception: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at CommerceBuilder.Products.Product.set_CustomUrl(String value)
at CommerceBuilder.DataClient.Api.ObjectHandlers.ImportHandler.ao(Object& A_0, Object A_1)
at CommerceBuilder.DataClient.Api.ObjectHandlers.ImportHandler.a(Array A_0, Type A_1, String A_2, String A_3, String A_4, Object A_5, w A_6, f A_7, c A_8, e A_9, String A_10)
0 Product(s) imported, 1 Product(s) updated.
Product(s) Import Complete...

I finally got it to update. Here is what I had to do. It looked like it was looking for the customurl field. My csv file only had the fields I wanted to update along with the minimal data (as per the wiki). I included all the fields and changed the match field to 'name' instead of productid (which didn't work) and the fields updated. Is this normal behavior?