Easy Populate - Intuitive?

[mensah]

I am trying to figure out easy populate, I just downloaded v2.76. I opened up the sample output in excel, and the amount of columns is stunning/overwhelming. I am planning an ecommerce site where I post all product info from my wholesaler. It doesnt seem like easy populate would save me time putting up products, unless my wholesaler provided a similiar excel spreadsheet.

 

The word easy in easy populate, tells me it should be rather intuitive. Maybe there is something im missing. Does anyone else use a method similar?

[mensah]

I am trying to figure out easy populate, I just downloaded v2.76. I opened up the sample output in excel, and the amount of columns is stunning/overwhelming. I am planning an ecommerce site where I post all product info from my wholesaler. It doesnt seem like easy populate would save me time putting up products, unless my wholesaler provided a similiar excel spreadsheet.

 

The word easy in easy populate, tells me it should be rather intuitive. Maybe there is something im missing. Does anyone else use a method similar?

[Jack_mcs]

Once EP is installed, use the Download Full Catalog option to get your initial excel file. That is what you should use to upload products. Not all columns are required. You can edit the file and remove non-required ones if you want, although it seems a waste of effort. The required fields are mentioned in the doc file that comes with the contribution. If you want to use EP to upload a file your supplier provides, you have to first convert that file to the format used by EP, which you can get by the above method.

 

Jack

[MrRoyce]

....If you want to use EP to upload a file your supplier provides, you have to first convert that file to the format used by EP, which you can get by the above method.

 

Jack

 

Ok..now..the trick is to get the supplier data into the EP format! How are folks doing that? Is there one method better than another? Is it usually a matter of custom code? Do suppliers sometimes supply the data in the EP format?

 

To me, this is the biggest issue of all.

[Jack_mcs]

The "format" is just how the excel file is laid out. For example the last colum has to have an entry of EOREOR. If the excel file you get from your supplier doesn't have that, which is unlikley, you will have to add it. You need to go through each column like that. If the other file has a column of image names, copy that whole column, except for the heading, to the images column in the EP file. Keep doing that until you are done.

 

Jack