How to Import Products Using CSV Files inside Magento
You can choose to import a huge number of products at a go to a Magento installation but this will be very inconvenient especially when you have hundreds or thousands of products. Hence, you need an automatic approach to add all those products to your Magento online store.
We shall address this problem by showing all the steps you can do in order to achieve a successful import:
Access your Magento administrator dashboard and go to Catalog >> Categories.
Enter your Category Name and press the Save button to save changes. Remember to click on Add Root Category in order to create a new category.
Notice when you have saved the category, you should be able to see the category ID. In our case, our e-commerce category ID is displayed as 8 as highlighted above.
REMEMBER TO SAVE CATEGORY ID ON A PAPER
You can forget this third step unless you plan to have additional attributes for the products you are importing, then you will need to create those via Stores menu >> Product under the Attributes section. You can use this functionality to add all custom attributes that are not present by default in a standard Magento installation.
Note also that you can also add additional attributes later at the moment you are creating a sample product. It is up to you whether to create the attributes before that or at the point you are creating the first product.
The next step is to add a product manually to your Magento installation. You will later export this product and use it as a template for importing the large batch. Make sure you include all attributes you will use for the products you are going to import in the sample product.
Once you create the new product and save it it will appear in the products list for your Magento store as seen below:
You are now ready to make the sample export that you will use as a template. In the Magento administrator area go to System >> Export (Under Data Transfer section).
This would redirect you to a new page where you should select Products from Entity Type Drop-down and CSV from Export File Format.
Now you should exclude the unnecessary attributes from the list by selecting them and then click on Continue button from the bottom of the page. This will save a new file on your computer with a name similar to catalog_product_YYYYMMDD_randomnumber.csv .
Open this .CSV file now with Microsoft Excel and you shall notice all columns which you have defined for your products.
Most importantly, you have copied/pasting the corresponding attributes in the correct columns. In addition, you need to add the category IDs.
Use the IDs from the text file you saved earlier in step 2 and put the corresponding category ID for the products you are adding. See sample spreadsheet below
NOTE: You need to create a new column called "id" and insert the ID number in the Excel sheet.
Once you're done with the Excel sheet update, you shall return to your Magento administrator dashboard and click on System >> Import (Under Data Transfer).
Under Entity Type select Products. Under Import Behavior, choose "Add/Update".
On the same page, scroll down to File to Import section. . Now upload the CSV file by clicking on the Browse button next to Select File to Import. Once you're done, click on the Check Data button at the top right corner.
If there are no issues or error with the import, the following message will appear:
File is valid! To start import process press "Import" button. Now, click on the Import button.
When the import completes you will get the Import successfully done message.
We shall address this problem by showing all the steps you can do in order to achieve a successful import:
Access your Magento administrator dashboard and go to Catalog >> Categories.
Enter your Category Name and press the Save button to save changes. Remember to click on Add Root Category in order to create a new category.
Notice when you have saved the category, you should be able to see the category ID. In our case, our e-commerce category ID is displayed as 8 as highlighted above.
REMEMBER TO SAVE CATEGORY ID ON A PAPER
You can forget this third step unless you plan to have additional attributes for the products you are importing, then you will need to create those via Stores menu >> Product under the Attributes section. You can use this functionality to add all custom attributes that are not present by default in a standard Magento installation.
Note also that you can also add additional attributes later at the moment you are creating a sample product. It is up to you whether to create the attributes before that or at the point you are creating the first product.
The next step is to add a product manually to your Magento installation. You will later export this product and use it as a template for importing the large batch. Make sure you include all attributes you will use for the products you are going to import in the sample product.
Once you create the new product and save it it will appear in the products list for your Magento store as seen below:
You are now ready to make the sample export that you will use as a template. In the Magento administrator area go to System >> Export (Under Data Transfer section).
This would redirect you to a new page where you should select Products from Entity Type Drop-down and CSV from Export File Format.
Now you should exclude the unnecessary attributes from the list by selecting them and then click on Continue button from the bottom of the page. This will save a new file on your computer with a name similar to catalog_product_YYYYMMDD_randomnumber.csv .
Open this .CSV file now with Microsoft Excel and you shall notice all columns which you have defined for your products.
Most importantly, you have copied/pasting the corresponding attributes in the correct columns. In addition, you need to add the category IDs.
Use the IDs from the text file you saved earlier in step 2 and put the corresponding category ID for the products you are adding. See sample spreadsheet below
NOTE: You need to create a new column called "id" and insert the ID number in the Excel sheet.
Once you're done with the Excel sheet update, you shall return to your Magento administrator dashboard and click on System >> Import (Under Data Transfer).
Under Entity Type select Products. Under Import Behavior, choose "Add/Update".
On the same page, scroll down to File to Import section. . Now upload the CSV file by clicking on the Browse button next to Select File to Import. Once you're done, click on the Check Data button at the top right corner.
If there are no issues or error with the import, the following message will appear:
File is valid! To start import process press "Import" button. Now, click on the Import button.
When the import completes you will get the Import successfully done message.
Updated on: 15/04/2019
Thank you!