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THESE HELP GUIDES RELATE TO THE OLD VERSION OF THE CONTROL PANEL. HELP RELATING TO THE NEW VERSION CAN BE FOUND IN THE "SUPPORT" SECTION OF THE CONTROL PANEL

How can I import my products?

If you have your product data in a spreadsheet format, such as Excel, then you can quickly and easily import all your products into your Free Webstore in one go. This can save you lots of time and will help you get your store profitable sooner.

Images cannot be uploaded via CSV (Comma Separated Values) and these will have to be uploaded manually using the Product Gallery page of your control panel. You can, however, put the image names in the CSV file and they will be automatically tagged to the product when they are uploaded.

Step 1 - Create the Spreadsheet

Create a standard spreadsheet with your column names in the first row. The currently available import column names are as follows:

The following are required fields and MUST be supplied:

• Product Name
• Product Code
• Category Name
• Product Price
• Product Description
• Product Image Name (eg. myimage.jpg)

The following is optional extra information that you can pass if you require.

• Fixed postage cost
• Qty in stock
• Product Weight
• Brand/Manufacturer name

In the example screen shot below, you will see a standard spreadsheet with the column names id, Product Name, code, Image Name, Price, Description, Category and Brand. The name of your columns do not have to match the lists above but you will need to match them up later so it will be easier if you name them something very similar. You can find a sample CSV template for download in the Manage Products > Import Products section of the control panel. This is useful if you are unsure how to organise your data for upload.

Step 2 - Save as CSV file

The next step is to feed this data into your webstore so we can create the products. To do this, we need to get your product data into standard CSV format (comma seperated values). This is easily done in most spreadsheet programs - in Microsoft Excel simply Save As and look for the file type .CSV. The example below shows how to save the spreadsheet as a CSV file but other programs will be very similar. For Microsoft Excel go to the File menu in the top toolbar and select Save As...

Next decide on the save name of your file and open the 'Save as type:' drop down list. Select the file type CSV and then Save.

If you are presented with the next confirmation box please select Yes.

Step 3 - Import into the Free Webstore control panel

Once you have your product data in CSV format, simply log into your Free Webstore control panel and visit the Manage Products page. At the top of that page you will see an Import Products link. Click this link to begin the import.

You will be presented with a simple upload screen. Press the Select button to browse to your CSV file on your local computer. Once selected, press the Upload CSV button to send the file to the server.

Step 4 - Map the columns

Once the file has been received and parsed, a simple form will appear. This form lets you map your CSV column names to those of our database. Simply use the drop down select boxes to map your data to the appropriately named columns. We try to match these columns up automatically for you but you should probably manually check that you are mapping the correct data to the correct column. Mapping a price column to your product name is likely to cause an error so match them up carefully. Use the ignore feature if your input data does not contain any of the data types. Once this has been done, you can press the Parse Products button to generate the product list.

Step 5 - Make adjustments in necessary

Hopefully, a product list will then be generated from the CSV data you supplied. The list of products will be editable should you wish to alter some minor details before adding them to your inventory. At the bottom of the page you should see an Insert Products button that will finally add the products to your inventory.

Please note that at present the importer simply adds the new products to your existing inventory; it will not merge previous uploads or update existing product data. This is a feature that we have in development and hope to launch soon.