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I am using magmi to import products into Magento.

I have a long list of simple products in a spreadsheet and it is a right pain going through it and adding a configurable product row for each set of products manually. It is of course also error prone.

I wonder if there is a way of processing this sheet automatically to add in the configurable product rows. It's fairly easy to see when one set of products changes to another.

I've browsed lots of forums and tried to do it through excel but can't seem to find a way of doing it. Has anyone any suggestions please?

Gerard de Visser
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PedroKTFC
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3 Answers3

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Check if this helps!

http://huztechbuzz.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/magento-add-configurable-products-dynamically/

Let me know if you anything else.

huzefam
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Auto creating configurables as a 'feature' may have several pitfalls:

  1. Which sku to use for the configurable ?

  2. What if a similar configurable sku exists:

    • do you want to "append" associated product list with simples listed
    • or replace the associated product list with ?

  3. what if the file has :

    • simples with configurable product to create AND
    • "real" simples that should not be associated to any configurable but share the same attribute_set

So, in a "generic" way, many questions may be left without answers and ,as such, couldn't be mass automated that easily.

However, you have a specific need , for a specific workflow, implying specific data. Then in YOUR case, you (or someone you can hire) can write a magmi plugin that would create the configurable according to YOUR specifications.

dweeves
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  • Thanks Dweeves. You're right but you always have to be careful creating products from import files. I was thinking of manufacturer product lists that will, in Magento terms, only list simple products but need to be combined into configurable products. I may look into creating a magmi plugin but for now I've found an alternative approach I've given as an answer below. – PedroKTFC Jun 05 '14 at 22:53
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I hadn't appreciated the capabilities of the magmi configurable product plugin until I saw this: https://www.blinkdata.com/magmi-configurable-item-processor/.

This showed me it's possible to import all the simple products in one file, and then import the configurable products from another file. The "trick" is to have SKUs with two components, along the lines cccc-ssss, with each group of simple products linked together by a common prefix cccc to the SKU. The configurable product has the SKU cccc.

Creating the configurable products file is not easy (for me at least), excel doesn't seem to have the best facilities for this but I found the following helpful: Getting unique values in Excel by using formulas only. I used the macro by totymedli. [I use this as the list of simple products I have are grouped by an attribute that has the same value for all products that can be within a configurable product.]

No doubt there are better ways but the main thing is the amount of manual work I have to do, and which is error prone, is reduced.

Community
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PedroKTFC
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