how to customise magento csv file in order to match my suppliers csv products catalog

Question

Magento Community Version: 1.7.0.2

Hi,

The last 5 days I have been searching everywhere for a solution to my big issue:

How to import a csv product catalog from my supplier(s).

I have 2 suppliers: The first with 200 products, that I have inserted manually. The second one (is a new supplier) with over 1000 products.

I have just received a csv file with all the products from that supplier.

I would like this time to make full use of Magento import function in order to save a lot of time. But I don't know how to proceed.

My first issue is that the csv file from my new supplier have the following attributes:

products_id, products_master, products_model, products_ean_code, products_name, products_description, products_image, products_image_extra1, products_image_extra2, products_image_extra3, products_image_extra4, products_image_extra5, products_image_extra6, products_quantity, products_price, products_manufacturer, products_status

While my Magento store have these attributes:

sku,_store,_attribute_set,_type,_category,_root_category,_product_websites,activation_information,color,colors,computer_manufacturers,contrast_ratio,cost,country_of_manufacture,country_orgin,cpu_speed,created_at,custom_design,custom_design_from,custom_design_to,custom_layout_update,description,dimension,enable_googlecheckout,farge,featured,finish,gallery,gender,gift_message_available,harddrive_speed,hardrive,has_options,image,image_label,in_depth,manufacturer,max_resolution,media_gallery,megapixels,memory,meta_description,meta_keyword,meta_title,minimal_price,model,msrp,msrp_display_actual_price_type,msrp_enabled,name,navn_eller_initialer,news_from_date,news_to_date,options_container,page_layout,personalisering,price,processor,ram_size,required_options,response_time,room,screensize,shape,shirt_size,shoe_size,shoe_type,short_description,sko_size,sko_size_m,small_image,small_image_label,special_from_date,special_price,special_to_date,status,tax_class_id,thumbnail,thumbnail_label,updated_at,url_key,url_path,visibility,weight,qty,min_qty,use_config_min_qty,is_qty_decimal,backorders,use_config_backorders,min_sale_qty,use_config_min_sale_qty,max_sale_qty,use_config_max_sale_qty,is_in_stock,notify_stock_qty,use_config_notify_stock_qty,manage_stock,use_config_manage_stock,stock_status_changed_auto,use_config_qty_increments,qty_increments,use_config_enable_qty_inc,enable_qty_increments,is_decimal_divided,_links_related_sku,_links_related_position,_links_crosssell_sku,_links_crosssell_position,_links_upsell_sku,_links_upsell_position,_associated_sku,_associated_default_qty,_associated_position,_tier_price_website,_tier_price_customer_group,_tier_price_qty,_tier_price_price,_group_price_website,_group_price_customer_group,_group_price_price,_media_attribute_id,_media_image,_media_lable,_media_position,_media_is_disabled,_super_products_sku,_super_attribute_code,_super_attribute_option,_super_attribute_price_corr

How should I proceed step by step to make Magento accept the csv file from my supplier?

P.S. I need a solution as simple and as specific as possible because I am new at Magento and even if I have built my store all by myself, I am not a programmer.

Thanks a lot in advance to everyone for any help I can get :-)

Espen

Answer 1

What you're looking to do isn't hugely difficult, but careful work needs to be considered. I'm only going to talk about simple products and not other product types, or extra attributes based on the assumption that you don't need those.

What you need to do is to "map" your supplier's attributes to magento's attributes. Some of them should be very easy to see: "products_name" from your supplier will be "name" in the magento table.

What I'd recommend you do is to create a dummy product using the manage products page first, fill in all the details with the supplier's table's title instead of the data - so for instance products_name for Name. Fill in all other necessary information as well, and choosing the appropriate options for the product.

Note that some of them may not be relevant at all and you can leave them out. Leave out the images as well, we'll deal with that another time.

Once you've done that, use System > Import/Export > Export to export a .csv file - you now have a .csv file for mapping purposes, where the relevant supplier's titles match up against your magneto table. Using that, copy and paste your data over from your supplier's file. Rinse and repeat for different suppliers.

Important Note: products_id from your supplier may not make a good sku, since different suppliers may actually use the same code for their own products (we have two suppliers that use 5 digit numbers), so you should create your own sku accordingly using excel formulas or something.

Import this file now and you should have all the products setup, sans images.

I'll come back to images tomorrow but it's unfortunately seriously complicated due to various shortfalls in magento's data profile when handling .csv files. Here's a link to give you an idea:

http://ashsmith.co/2012/05/importing-product-images-via-csv-in-magento-1-7-0-0/