Magento 2 - Configurable products not pairing with simple products?

Question

When I import my .csv - with my simple and configurable products inside, the document is imported correctly with no validation errors. The issue I'm having is the configurable products aren't paired with their simple counterparts.

Overall, I have 2k configurable products, and 4k simple. One of my configurable products has been successfully paired with it's simple counterpart, out of 6000 products.

I've researched online, and have ensured the following:

• Magento 2 Developer Mode enabled
• All products are enabled
• All products have a quantity above 0, and all are in stock
• Reindex once products have been added
• Magento multistore disabled
• Pack size (Configurable product attribute) set to "global", "enabled at storefront", "Dropdown", "filterable (with results)", "visible at storefront", "used in product listing"
• My CSV is formatted correctly, using "configurable_variations" to list the simple products which will be paired with the configurable product.

Answer 1

If you are importing using CSV then you need to add one column named configuration_variations and add value in it with | separation.

ex.

configuration_variations
sku=AB1|sku=AB2

Answer 2

I have been wrestling with this issue for hours, and in my case it was caused by the fact that my sku values in the original site had leading zeros.

These were being dropped in the export file in the sku column , but were still present in the configurable variations field eg:

sku=0369,container_size=10 kg|sku=0370,container_size=23 kg

but simple products, by now in the .csv file had sku of 369 and 370 respectively, hence no match.

Seems obvious once you spot it!