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Excel and Bulk Uploads

 
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WhiteUnicornBooks



Posts: 5

PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 10:43 pm    Post subject: Excel and Bulk Uploads Reply with quote

I've looked around the forums and haven't seen this directly addressed so I will ask the question: How do you save a file from Excel to use as a bulk upload file for eCrater?

It does seem to me that the acceptance of a tab delimited file from Excel without have to jump though some hoops would be of great benefit to eCrater. But maybe not since it still doesn't work. Nor did it work a year ago. Nor the year before that.

Not only that, there is still no real explanation of how to make an acceptable file from one of the most used programs on the planet which creates a tab delimited file. Oh yes there is a warning, i.e. "Make sure there are no line breaks in the description. If there are any replace them with \n. This will ensure you will not get structure errors." A very friendly customer statement that. The customer just has to know about differ file formats for Windows and Unix and make sure he hunts down the 'proper way' of saving a file from Excel or find a program which will convert the file for them.

So I guess to answer my own question from the help I have received: You have to save it in the proper format as a tab delimited file.
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thecheapskirt



Posts: 2123

PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 11:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, if you are using a Mac, be sure you save it in the Windows format. I learned that one by experience.

And the \n thing? All the line breaks are replaced by that in your description so you have to clean them all up manually after importing.

I never got my pics to load either, even though they were all up on my website and I had the correct URLs in my file.

So when I opened my second store, I decided to just do it from scratch instead of importing. I use a lot of copy/paste.

There are other free store builder sites out there that have smoother import processes. I just can't use them because I have an older Mac still running a PowerPc processor so anything that is flash-based is too tedious for me, and most of the ones I'd tested were very flash-heavy.

----

ugh sorry for the autocorrect, I posted that using my phone and it had some interesting word choices (which I've fixed LOL)


Last edited by thecheapskirt on Sun Oct 09, 2011 10:14 am; edited 1 time in total
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zickit



Posts: 21857

PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 11:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I never did get the /n thing to work. Everything just comes in one paragraph ... no line breaks.

I THINK you need to save it as a UTI file for it to work upload. Did you read the instructions .. the ? in the bulk lister section?
It's been YEARS since I attempted to use the bulk lister because I think the results are ugly.
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ecrater-moon
forum admin


Posts: 571

PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 11:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Open your file in Excel
Choose File Save As When the dialog box opens choose tab delimited
Save the file to a location that you can find the file.

Go to the file that you just saved
Find the file where you saved it
Right click on the file and choose Open with Notepad
After the file opens choose File Save As and a dialog box will open
At the very bottom of this box change the drop down next to encoding to UTF-8

Save the file


em
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cosmicray



Posts: 7286

PostPosted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 5:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

thecheapskirt wrote:
And the \n thing? All the line breaks are replaced by that in your deception so you have to clean them all up manually after importing.

If you have the xcode environment installed (which is a lot to ask), you can easily flip between the various line ending combinations.

Quote:
There are other free store builder sites out there that have smoother import processes. I just can't use them because I have an older Mac still running a PowerPc processor so anything that is flash-based is too tedious for me, and most of the ones I'd tested were very flash-heavy.

Something written in java would be better (not perfect, but better than Flash).
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WhiteUnicornBooks



Posts: 5

PostPosted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 12:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ecrater-moon wrote:
Open your file in Excel
Choose File Save As When the dialog box opens choose tab delimited
Save the file to a location that you can find the file.

Go to the file that you just saved
Find the file where you saved it
Right click on the file and choose Open with Notepad
After the file opens choose File Save As and a dialog box will open
At the very bottom of this box change the drop down next to encoding to UTF-8

Save the file


em


I did and still got a failed. This time instead of just a
Row 2: Invalid price: 50.00
I got quite a few more lines, i.e.
Row 1: Invalid header line
Row 2: Invalid price: 50.00
Row 2: Invalid quantity: 3
Row 3: Invalid price: 70.00
Row 3: Invalid quantity: 4
Row 4: Invalid price: 18.00
Row 4: Invalid quantity: 5
Row 5: Invalid price: 25.00
Row 5: Invalid quantity: 3
...

Any more suggestions?
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ecrater-moon
forum admin


Posts: 571

PostPosted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 1:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Send the first 100 lines of the file, saved just as you saved the file that you uploaded to questions@ecrater.com. Please send it as an attachment to the email.


em
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WhiteUnicornBooks



Posts: 5

PostPosted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 2:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ecrater-moon wrote:
Send the first 100 lines of the file, saved just as you saved the file that you uploaded to questions@ecrater.com. Please send it as an attachment to the email.


em


Done.
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