How do I use the XLS spreadsheet to maintain VirtueMart

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Would you like to maintain your VirtueMart catalog with an input MS Excel spreadsheet? Here is some help material.

Please find a link to the MS Excel file sample, explaining how to use XLS command rows to maintain VirtueMart Catalog Categories & Products: MS Excel commands help for VirtueMart Catalog Maintenance (V.1.4 updated)

You can use of course the very good online help about Virtuemart 1.1 User Manual .

In order to use the spreadsheet (but you could use a database too) to maintain your VM catalog, you have to follow this procedure if you start from a blank VM database otherwise you could start from point number 4:

1. Within XLS, create all the first level categories (cmd: productCategoryAdd).
   (can use rows in the attached template as starting point).
   
   
2. Save the spreadsheet and import it into the VB.NET sample.
   
   
3. From VB.NET sample, upload to VM catalog.
   
   
4. From VB.NET sample, download all created categories to recuperate generated valid "category_id" numbers.
   
   
5. From VB.NET sample, export to a new spreadsheet (or the same XLS if you set a different XLS sheet name).
   
   
6. Open the spreadsheet and create CHILD categories if necessary with existing parent_category_id (cmd: productCategoryAdd).
   
   
7. Redo steps 2 to 5.
   
   
8. Open the spreadsheet and create products based on existing parent or child category_id (cmd: productAdd).
   
   
9. Redo steps 2 to 5.
   
   
10. Open the spreadsheet and create CHILD products if required based on existing parent product_id (no category_id).

Then you can maintain your VM catalog remotely and massively (multiple records instead of one at a time with VM admin screen).

You get also a tabular view of all your categories and products with all MS Excel tools to search, filter or even query existing databases.

This facilitates greatly your VirtueMart catalog maintenance!