Creating your VirtueMart Catalog with Excel and VMConnector

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Maintaing your VirtueMart catlog using VMConnector and Excel is easy.  If you're starting from a blank catlog, start from point 1, otherwise you can skip points 2 -4 .  Here's what you need to do:

  1. Ensure that you create and necessary Product Types and Product Type Parameters through the Virtuemart admin panel.
  2. Download the example help file to see what fields you need in your Excel spreadsheet.
  3. Within Excel, create all the first level categories.  Please use the files downloaded in step 2 as an example.
  4. Save the spreadsheet and import it into the VMConnector Client on the Catalog Categories tab.  Please see the video tutorial for the VMConnector Client if you're not sure how to do this.
  5. Within the VMConnector Client, upload the categories to the VM catalog.
  6. Within the VMConnector Client, download all created categories so you can see the generated category_IDs for use later.
  7. Within the VMConnector Client, export the list of categories to a new spreadsheet.
  8. Open the new category spreadsheet and create any child categories you need.  Ensure you set the parent_category_id of all child categories to the category_id of the parent category.
  9. Redo steps 4 to 7 with the latest spreadsheet.  You should now have a completed category structure, but no products.
  10. Within Excel, use the example files downloaded in step 2 to produce a sheet with all your parent products. 
  11. Redo steps 4 to 7 with the latest spreadsheet.  Note you will need to use the Catalog Products tab to import as we're now importing products.
  12. Open the latest spreadsheet downloaded that contains all your parent products and their IDs.  Now create any child products and ensure the parent_product_id column matches the product_id of the parent product.
  13. Within the VMConnector Client, upload the latest product spreadsheet via the Catalog Products tab.
You should now have a full product catalog availble on your VirtueMart store.  You can use the client to maintain the product catalog in the future too, just make sure you download the latest version of the spreadsheet before you change anything.

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