Import bulk Products with mixed categories, types & multiselect attributes

Question

I have a situation where I need to upload bulk products, the CSV or XLS will contain products that may belong to different categories and may have many product types.Also the product will contain attributes that are multiselect ( eg zip codes here a product can be associated with on eor many zip codes). and suppose a product is already present[can be identify by name or product code] in DB during a import it will update the product multiselect attributes instead of creating a duplicate entries.

Now the question is that what strategy should I approach, with normal magento import functionality is that possible ? And if I go for Magmi or some other tools how I need to go ahead with my CSV or XLS ? Their is no inventory associated with product, its more like virtual. So is it possible with a single csv or xls to do the import and update ? Moreover is it possible in magento ?

Answer 1

Basically, you can also import complex data to Magento as long as the import requirements are met. In general, multiple categories for products are not a problem for the import process, as well as multiple attribute values. These values will be imported as comma-separated values themselves based on the import syntax.

It's important to check for the minimum required columns for your import to work. This depends on the tools you are going to use (Magento importer vs. Magmi for instance), e.g.

"store","attribute_set","type","sku","websites"

for Magmi.

Concering efficiency I'd definitely go for Magmi, especially if you are handling larger data sets. Also, there are a couple of extensions available, such as the on-the-fly category creator. Unfortunately, the Magmi docs are somewhat minimalistic and oftentimes it's a bit of trial and error to be honest.

Whatever you do make to test your import a couple of times on a test or staging system.