You can import and export certain essential data sets (including order, product and customer data) using the Export and Import programs accessible in Admin. 


Important: All data needs to be in UTF-8 format.
On some versions of Excel spreadsheets you may need to open a new sheet then import the data to select UTF-8


NB Take care when modifying your data and re-importing it. Always try a single line of data first and check it is ok before re-importing the whole dataset.


TXT File Import / Export

In many places we use txt tab delimited file formats in UTF-8 format for export/import especially product data. We advise using LibreOffice which is free and can be downloaded from the internet as other software may or may not easily support this format. 


Using Excel

For details on importing txt files using Excel, read the Microsoft article.


Using Libre Office

To open a file you may need to rename it first to end in .csv 

e.g.  products-feed-02-03-2020.txt > products-feed-02-03-2020.txt.csv


The encoding will normally automatically populate as shown below:


It will then open in columns and you can make your changes. 

Note: Unless instructed in the particular import/export program, don't remove any columns or the import will either fail or not populate all the data correctly.


After making your changes, save the file as a Text CSV file that ends .txt in the Save As field but with the Automatic file name extension field unticked.



If you see the message below select Use Text CSV Format.


You will now have a Text CSV file ending .txt in UTF-8 format ready to import into the system. 


As stated previously, if you are new to imports/exports we recommend doing a test run with a single row of data and checking it has imported as expected and all the data looks fine in the relevant program (e.g. Product Manager for Products, User Manager for Users etc). Once you're happy then you can import in bulk.