Importing Products into Checkout

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If you’re looking to import Products into Checkout, you should first import them into the Example Store. This is important since if you make a mistake when selecting fields, or there’s an issue with the text file, you will have to manually update each Product, or restore a backup of your store and import them again. We also strongly recommend making a backup of your store before doing the import.

You can import text files that are comma separated (CSV extension) or tab delimited (TXT extension) into Checkout. Tab delimited is generally easier since commas can sometimes be embedded in Product Names or Descriptions. If the file you’re working with is in an Excel spreadsheet, you can save it as a tab delimited file.

If you have any issues importing, open the file in Excel and remove unnecessary columns. If you exported the file from another application or received it from a supplier, check for html code and any inconsistencies in numeric fields. These inconsistencies could be blank entries, or text appearing in a numeric field.

In some cases, it’s been discovered that blank fields might not have a tab place holder. When importing the Products, if some entries are skipped, or Checkout does not import all products, it’s best to open the file in a text editor (such as TextMate) that can show the tabs. This video covers how to look for missing tabs and import Products into Checkout.