CSV Import Errors

[Spitos]

I'm testing out and trying to find quicker ways to do tasks on an actinic store with a large database.
When adding new sub-sections through the actinic program, I have to wait for around 5 seconds after clicking apply for the program to respond and complete the task before I can add the next one.
It may not sound like long but when there are loads to create then it's just a bore and a time waster.

I have come up with a solution to create these in a csv file and then import it into actinic. But I had some troubles which I couldn't quite understand.
So, I decided to do a straight forward csv export of the full catalog, create a new site and then import the file to see if it worked.
It didn't.... surprise surprise :(

When importing the file, the 'import field' column all had nice blue ticks next to the title of every row so I thought it would work, but I have so many errors... please see the attachment: http://community.actinic.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2861&stc=1&d=1187687662
importfail.txt

Actinic always makes things so unnecessarily complicated, can anyone please tell me why this import would not work :confused:

[los_design]

It looks like some general errors in your tax tables, missing images etc.

I would ensure your data is correct and complete and try again.

Check out all your settings and work from there.

BOL

[jmc200]

Have you been editing the .csv in Excel before importing? I found that Excel would try to "tidy up" the csv file by adding blank fields in, which got Actinic very confused.

jmc200

[Spitos]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I've figured it out now...

I was missing a bulk of code above the new code that I was inserting and basically, I just tried to import the new data without all of my custom properties etc etc.

I have done it in a slightly different way now, by exporting the whole catalog to a csv file and inserting my code that I generated before trying to import the file.

Because of the size of my database, it wont all open up in excel, so I only use excel to generate my code and then use notepad for inserting it into the main data! I've noticed that excel strips out the " characters, so I change them before putting code into it, then search replace back to a ".

:D

[Spitos]

I've had some errors after importing my csv file but they don't seem to add up...

They read something like:
Line 39143: An invalid Section could not be imported. All child items will be skipped as well.
and
Line 39143: The page name must not contain path information.

With many of the same errors for different lines, but the sections have been imported and the page names do not contain path information!
http://community.actinic.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2863&stc=1&d=1187769823
importfail2.txt

Should I be concerned?
The way I have done this import will save me a days work at least, every time I need to add new sections so I really want it to be non problematic and I don't want to be getting into the practice of accepting errors as the norm only to find later on that I have to go back and enter them manually, the boring long way.

Now a bit confusing here but...
After a little more testing and importing my new csv file into Actinic (the one with the errors above), I do a full export to csv again.
After this has completed, I import the file that has just been exported and now those errors mentioned above don't show after completion.

http://community.actinic.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2864&stc=1&d=1187769823
importfail3.txt