Recently I upgraded from Magento Community 1.4 to 1.5 to take advantage of the next import and export features released in 1.5.  These updates are intended to finally fix the major pain point for many Magento users – it is not easy to import or export products and customers, especially on shared servers or machines with lower resource levels.

I had a specific need to export all of my products, clean the catalog data and import back to Magento.  Here are some things I have found so far.

#1 Menu Location

The new import and export features are in “System > Import/Export > Import” and “System > Import/Export > Export” – the old/legacy profiles have been renamed “Dataflow – profiles” and “Dataflow – Advanced Profiles”

#2 Options

The first screen has two main options “Products” and “Customers” and an option for file type (.csv is the only option)

#3 Products – Detailed Options

Once you select “Products” you have the option to restrict the products included in the .csv file.  This is a much larger list of options than the previous version and nice to see.

(screenshot too large to include)

#4 Run Job

To run the job with the parameters you have specified click the “Continue” button in the lower right to create the file.

Note:  In my case I was trying to export 16,000+ products on a shared server with limited resources (my staging site) and ran into memory errors.  To fix the issue I had to restrict the products exported by setting price ranges in the export and change the ranges until I had a small enough memory usage.

#5 File Created

#5 Resulting File – Columns found in .csv

The following columns were exported:
sku
_store
_attribute_set
_type
_category
_product_websites
color
cost
created_at
custom_design
custom_design_from
custom_design_to
custom_layout_update
description
enable_googlecheckout
gallery
gift_message_available
has_options
image
image_label
is_imported
manufacturer
media_gallery
meta_description
meta_keyword
meta_title
minimal_price
name
news_from_date
news_to_date
options_container
page_layout
price
prices
required_options
short_description
small_image
small_image_label
special_from_date
special_price
special_to_date
status
tax_class_id
thumbnail
thumbnail_label
updated_at
url_key
url_path
visibility
weight
qty
min_qty
use_config_min_qty
is_qty_decimal
backorders
use_config_backorders
min_sale_qty
use_config_min_sale_qty
max_sale_qty
use_config_max_sale_qty
is_in_stock
notify_stock_qty
use_config_notify_stock_qty
manage_stock
use_config_manage_stock
use_config_qty_increments
qty_increments
use_config_enable_qty_increments
enable_qty_increments
_links_related_sku
_links_related_position
_links_crosssell_sku
_links_crosssell_position
_links_upsell_sku
_links_upsell_position
_associated_sku
_associated_default_qty
_associated_position
_tier_price_website
_tier_price_customer_group
_tier_price_qty
_tier_price_price

Note: With my memory restriction I had to create a bunch of these files and manually add them all to a single excel file.

Using this method I was able to export over 16,000 SKUs from a shared server environment in a little over 1 hour.  The export job itself is very much improved from the previous versions and I am happy with the results so far.

Now on to the update and import process, I want to be able to do the following:

• Change product titles in the export file and import them back to Magento in Bulk
• Modify the catalog taxonomy and add/change categories by changing in the data file
• Configure complex products (grouped, configurable, etc) directly in the data file.
• Reload the updated data feed without experiencing memory issues and failures
• Reindex the site to pick up the new catalog

I don’t know how many of my wish list items will work… off to begin testing.