Importing Product Variables Using CSV/excel

I have an excel spread sheet containing 600 plus products the I can import into the shop no problem. Each product has the same variable ie colour. Is there away to add the variable to the excel file. I dont really want to have to add it through the shop one at a time.

Thanks

When you say variable, you mean a characteristic ?
If your characteristic is called color and that you have the values blue and red, you can do like this:
product_name,product_parent_id,color
main product,,blue
variant 1,main_product,blue
variant 2,main product,red

Sorry. Yes its is characteristic. Can these be added to the excel doc or can it only be done once it is converted to csv?

Thanks. This is a great product by the way....

You can of course do the same in excel.
a CSV is only a tabular data set : each comma separates the data into columns and each return carriage separates the data into rows.

so in excel it will be like this:

Thanks again for amazing support. I take it then each product has to be listed with each of its colur variants. so i need to creat an entry for each color variant. There are 20 different colours so I need 20 different varriaions of that product listed in the excel sheet.

The product id is it ceated automatically or do I need to creat it first before the import?

Am I on right track with attached..

The product id is indeed created automatically

xml attached

HikaShop does not handle xml for import, only CSV.

Sorry saved in wrong format.

Sorry saved in wrong format.

You don't need to precise all the information in the variants. Only the information which is different from the main product. It's faster and simpler. And when you need to change something in the future, it will be easier as you will only have to change the main product information.

Thanks again for the corrected csv. When I import my products using this format into the shop I get the following error and the characteristics are not displayed. "6090 products found : 0 new products imported, 5800 invalid product code, 290 already existing products

Have I got the product_parent_id wrong

Thanks

Ah, you should specify a product_code in your variants. But please note that each product_code should be unique.
So, if your main product's code is "my_prod", you could have your variants code being "my_prod_blue", "my_prod_red", etc for example.

great will try that. Thanks

Hi Changed the code in product parent_id but still get invalid product code error.

File attached

The product_parent_id column should contain the code of the main product while the product_code column should contain the code of the variant.
It should be like this:

Parent_Category,categories,product_name,product_parent_id,Confirm Colour,product_code,price_value,images
Base Units,Hi Line Base White,High Line Base 150mm x 720mm,,White,150B,21.71,hlbase.jpg
,,,150B,White,150B_w,21.71,
,,,150B,Cream,150B_c,21.71,
,,,150B,Vanilla,150B_v,23.87,
,,,150B,Alabaster,150B_a,23.87,
,,,150B,Natural Aida Walnut,150B_na,23.87,
,,,150B,Tobacco Aida Walnut,150B_ta,23.87,
,,,150B,Calais Oak,150B_co,23.87,
,,,150B,Light Winchester Oak,150B_lw,23.87,
,,,150B,Lancaster Oak,150B_lo,23.87,
,,,150B,Winchester Oak,150B_wo,23.87,
,,,150B,Canadian Maple,150B_cm,23.87,
,,,150B,Ellmau Beech,150B_eb,23.87,
,,,150B,Sand beige,150B_sb,23.87,
,,,150B,Lissa Oak,150B_lo,23.87,
,,,150B,Light Tiepolo,150B_lt,23.87,
,,,150B,Dark Tiepolo,150B_dt,23.87,
,,,150B,Woodline Mocha,150B_wm,26.33,
,,,150B,Dark Cordoba Olive,150B_dco,26.33,
,,,150B,Ontario Walnut,150B_ow,26.33,
,,,150B,Romano Cherry,150B_rc,26.33,

Thanks. First class support....