Easy Populate

[David M. Graham]

Louise,

Very cool tip!

Here are a few pieces of information which might also be helpful in understanding and working with  EasyPopulate, particularly under CRE Loaded 6.2.x :

Timeouts tend to occur when you have a large product table.  The ability to filter the data set by category or manufacturer were added to help reduce this problem.

During the 6.2 release, indexing of the products was shifted from the products_model field (v_product_model in the EP file) to products_id.  The product ID field cannot be changed from the Admin interface.  This was to address problems with data set mangling in earlier versions of Easy Populate.

In 6.2 releases, you should be able to create a new product using Easy Populate by just leaving the v_products_id field blank.   Because of MySQL changes in the way an empty value is handled, the ability to leave the field blank or use a Zero (0) in this field is being added in the 6.2.14 patch (not yet released).

Another issue which is being changed is the handling of sub-products.

For some time now, sub-products have NOT been assigned to a category when they are created.  As Easy Populate only exports products from categories, this is a problem.  The patch 14 version of the EP import tool addresses this by assigning subproducts to the category in which their parent product is found (per original design specs) and there are corresponding changes in the categories.php file. 

How existing sub-products which lack categories can be dealt with in bulk is not yet decided.  However, as existing products are edited, the problem should eventually resolve...

David

[raven]

These are baby step directions on how to use Easy Populate. I wrote these out for 6.15 version

EASY POPULATE

Make sure you back up before you begin with this.
I work with one category/sub category at a time. We had some issues when we worked with to many products at one time.
Have a folder empty in your windows explorer for this

Go to your admin and click on Easy populate
Stay at advanced easy populate

Go to limit by category and choose/click on  a category to be worked on
Then click on start file creation

Then save file download to a empty folder your going to use
Save it as “Excel Work Sheet”
Then click save
Then it will download when complete in the empty folder
Then “close” box
Then minus the page and go to explorer and open the folder (right click on file and open with “Microsoft works spread sheet”)

Make your changes

Then go to file
Click on save as and save in whatever folder you are using
Save type as “text and tabs”
And when you do that the file name will appear
Click on the file to highlight it to blue and it puts the file into the “file name”. Make sure to change the last digit so you can tell the files apart (change it in “file name below”
Then click save
Then it says “OK to save w/o formatting
Click OK

Then minus the spread sheet
Then go back to easy populate page in the admin
Go to upload EP file for import
Click browse and go to the folder you just worked on (the one you changed the last digit in)
Click on it and then click open

Then click on “insert into DB”
Then you get the uploaded file items

Check them, it should say updated near the top left of the page

Then log off
X out spread sheet
X out explorer
Check your catalog to see if the changes are there
Then you can delete the files left in the folder in explorer