Adding New Products by CSV Import

One of the most important parts of building your store is of course making sure you have something to sell! We recommend getting started on building your catalog with manually made products as this will give you a great introduction to how Zoey Products work. To learn more about building these, please see: Adding a New Product. You can also add products by mass importing them with a CSV file.

This tutorial will tell you what attributes you need to include by default in order to successfully import a file as well as some basic troubleshooting ideas. 

Create a template CSV file

In order to import your product information into Zoey successfully, you must format your files properly. The file that you will be uploading must be in Comma-Separated Values (CSV) format. Most spreadsheet and database applications can create, edit and save CSV files. We highly recommend using Google Sheets as your editor as these have caused the least formatting issues for us and our users!

If you use a Mac, you may need to save the CSV as CSV (Windows) file- your Zoey store will not be able to read the file otherwise. 

The easiest way to create a template to export your current Zoey Catalog. If there is something in particular you would like to create using CSVs such as configurable products or related products, it's helpful to manually create a product like this before the export! 

To export your products log in to your control panel and go to Advanced > Import & Export > Export. Choose your Entity Type as Products and scroll to the bottom of the page to click Continue and initiate download.

Configure your CSV columns

Now that you have your CSV file, it may look a little daunting. We recommend trimming your CSV file down to only the columns you need for these products. You are required to keep several of these columns by default and file import will not be successful without these:

Required Product Attributes for New Products (written as they should appear in the CSV file column):

• sku
  Stock Keeping Unit - a unique value to identify the product. No two items can share the same SKU in Zoey. 
• _attribute_set
  Unless you have already set up Attribute Sets, set this to "Default"
• _type
  What type of product is this? Your options are: simple, configurable, virtual, and downloadable. Grouped or bundle products can not be imported at this time and must be created in the Control Panel.
• name
  The product's name- such as "Magic Wand". This should not be longer than 60 characters 
  

  Please note we highly recommend keeping every product name unique!
  Unless URL Keys are also specified in the initial import, the URL Keys will be generated from the name of the item. Duplicate keys can cause issues down the lines, so keep these names unique and avoid this from the beginning. Have a bunch of simple products that are various sizes? Try Product Name - Size to keep them unique.

• description
  The long description with detailed information regarding the product. 
• short_description
  The shorter description that appears to the right of the Product Image on the Product page
• price
  The amount you are charging your customers for this product before sales or discounts. 
• status
  Is the product Enabled or Disabled? Enabled is 1, Disabled, 2
• visibility
  How will the customer be able to view this item?
  
  Visible in Catalog and Search = 4
  Visible in Catalog =2
  Visible in Search = 3
  Not visible individually  = 1
• tax_class_id
  Tax Class ID as set up under Set Up > Tax > Product Tax Classes. By default, Taxable Goods are 2
• weight
  Enter a numerical value for the weight of this product. This will be used by any calculated shipping methods. 
• _product_websites
  At this time, your only option is base

At the end of this tutorial, you can download an example of what your CSV may look like which includes these attributes. This example is a little beyond the basic as it includes category & URL information. You can also download this file here: Zoey CSV Import Example

Adding in a custom Attribute? Make sure your column heading matches the attribute code exactly- if your attribute code is "color", "Color" will not be accepted by the system. 

Adding additional information such as Category and not sure what the correct column headers are? Check here: CSV Fields - What do they mean?

Enter your data in to the CSV

Now you need to add all your product's information to the CSV in the appropriate columns. As you may have seen in your template, one SKU may have multiple lines to show multiple answers or values for one column such as Categories. 

Required Product Attributes as listed above must have a value entered for each SKU. Unless you have a custom attribute which is set to Required, all other items are options. 

Check for and resolve errors

Here are some of the common errors:

• If your spreadsheet defines categories for your products, those categories must be created within Zoey before uploading your CSV!

• The total size of of the CSV file cannot exceed 110MB

• HTML in your CSV will often return an error or simply skip the product! For CSV imports, use plain text.

• The same is of Smart quotes and apostrophes. If you use smart quotes (the ones that curve in) ’ rather than the regular or plain text ' (straight up and down) the link will be skipped.
  You can learn more about these here.

Import your CSV

Go to Advanced > Import & Export > Import

Once you are alerted the import was successful, Refresh your Store and admire your newly updated product list!

Need to upload images for these as well? Check out Bulk Image Import for Products