[ic] Cannot upload products.txt via excel, or through the admin, Excel major issues please help

[Andrew Brown]

Ok here the issue. I need to upload a lot of products to my database.
Inputing my items manually via the admin takes to much time. I need to input
the data in a excel spreadsheet and upload it.

This is what I am doing:

I export the products database to excel. Make my changes, then save and try
to import the excel file via the admin. Of course I get an error telling
Non-existent table ''. Its not a naming issue b/c I named the excel file
products.

ok that's one issue

Another issues.

I tried exporting the products database into excel then saved it as text
file. I then bring it into this program called editpro and convert the file
to unix. Then I upload the products.txt file via the admin. I still get an
error... about interchange not being able to read the products database.
Also I always have remove the product.sql and restart interchange. I remove
the product.sql in order for interchange to reload the product.txt file, if
I don't take out the product.sql then interchange will not reread the
product.txt file.

It seems to be a major formatting issue, I have tried everything and I
cannot make any changes via excel and then upload.

Another issue..

I have a column in my products database called comment. This has my
manufacturers information. The manufacturers information on my products are
very long. For some reason when I export my products database, excel will
not put the manufacturer information on one line. It splits all the
information into three lines. Is their a limit on excel.onhow much data can
go into one cell. This causes errors b/c  interchange only takes half of my
manufacturer information and cuts off the rest uploading via the admin.

I also read this but would this fix my problem:

Microsoft Excel is a widely-used tool to maintain Interchange databases, but
has several problems with its standard TAB-delimited export, like encasing
fields containing commas in quotes, generating extra carriage returns
embedded in records, and not including trailing blank fields
To avoid problems, use a text-qualifier of none.
Set the EXCEL attribute to 1 to fix these problems on import:

Database products EXCEL 1

Where would you set this? In the catalog.cfg?


Hopefully someone can shed some light on my import and exporting problem
with excel