Excel import: Product

Importing Excel Files

Importing and mass-updating products via Excel is an efficient way to create and maintain product data, and something many people are accustomed to working with. However, blindly importing all data from an Excel sheet when uploading it also carries a high risk of errors and unintended overwriting of information.

Therefore, in feed®, we have created an import function where you can upload your Excel document, link only the columns with data you want to import to desired fields in feed®. Choose whether you want to create, update, or both, and see a simple analysis of the import before starting the job. This is to reduce the risk of importing something incorrectly, overwriting data, or creating products that were not planned.

When uploading an Excel file, you can either use "drag & drop" and drop the desired file into the large "upload area" (1.), or you can click the upload icon in that box to open a file explorer, navigate to, and select the desired Excel file.

If you have saved any templates for mapping Excel files, you will see them in a list (3.) below the upload area. Here, you can update names or delete old templates.

Mapping of data from Excel to feed® fields.

The first step to be able to import via Excel is to inform feed® of which column in Excel contains the "Product number". This is required in Excel to identify the correct product in feed® for updating. If there are duplicate products with the same product number in feed®, the update will fail as there is no unique way to identify which product needs to be updated.

If the product number in the Excel file is not found, the product will be created if the option for create has been set at the import analysis.

If the same Excel import is to be executed on a regular basis with the same template you can speed up the import mapping process by saving the mapping as an template by pressing this icon in the top right corner. 

You will be prompted with the option to create a new template, or update an existing one. 

If you have a template that covers the columns you are using, click on this icon in the top right corner.

You will be prompted with a list or search option for the template. Select it and press "apply template".

Once the mapping is complete, you can click on the icon in the bottom right corner.

This will take you to a small import analysis where you can choose the import mode and verify that the number of products for creation and/or update matches the expected values.

1. Select import mode
   Here you can choose if you want to:
   A: Create new and update existing products.
   B: Only create new product numbers. Assuming that product numbers do not exist,
   C: Only update existing ones. Assuming that it finds a unique match on the product numbers.
   
   
2. Select action
   If you have finished data mapping and have chosen the import mode, you can press "Start import"
   Alternatively, you can cancel and go back to mapping.

After the import is done you will get a result list. 

Any warnings or Errors will be listed with line number and Product numer.

Clicking on these will give you more information on the problems. 

Some errors might originate from the same error source. For example import code missing, or mapping to a field that expects numbers, but get text from the import. 

Clicking on the rows can be useful to identify issues if there are just a few warnings or errors, but a better overview is available via: Integrations - Jobs. 

Here you will find a list imports. The Excel type import should be in that list. 

Click on that type to enter the list of Excel imports

Click on the import you want to investigate:

The error and warnings should be presented with rows that shows details on what should be correced for the import lines to update feed correctly. 

From here you can: 

1. Click on the icon to go directly to the product (and perhaps correct the issue manually. If the product number is missing or you have duplicates on product number this will not be possible. 
2. Click on icon to initiate a download the list to Excel.
   1. You will get a notification when it is done
   2. Click on the bell and then click on "Job details excel export finnished" to download the report. The same report is also available via Integrations - Excel export - Job details. 
      

The second option will let you filter issues in Excel so you can identify warnings or errors that are the same on several products. 
This will potentially help you to change a few values that can import a lot of products with warnings correctly. 
For example, one wrong import key could results in several hundred product warnings. Correct that and all of them will be imported correctly