Magneto – Updating prices via import process

Updating product pricing on thousands of skus is easy and quick if you know how to use Magento’s import process (instead of the dataflow import, which has been deprecated as of Magento 1.5 due to slow import times).
In order to update pricing, you need to first build a spreadsheet with 5 columns and populate with data for all products.[download id=”2124″].

If you look at the spreadsheet, you’ll notice the column names are different than the dataflow format, which is important since the import will not work unless the columns are named correctly.
Also important is to use Open Office for generating the spreadsheet, since Excel will strip some of the csv formatting, causing errors during import.
Next step it to log into your admin and navigate to System > Import/Export > Import. You’ll see a browse button, which you’ll use to find your spreadsheet with updated pricing.
Make sure to select the Append Complex Data, since we only want to update the price not replace any other values.

Once you have your spreadsheet selected, click on Check Data button on far right side of page.
Magento will parse your spreadsheet for errors and display results of validation.

If your spreadsheet is properly formatted, you will see the message “File is valid! To start import process press “Import” button”.
Once you press the Import button, your spreadsheet will be imported and all prices will be updated, based on the sku’s your spreadsheet contains.
You will also need to reindex the Product Prices index as well.

Please be aware that you can also update any product attribute using the same process, but instead of price column, add the attribute name to top of column and values for each sku down the column.
This makes it pretty easy to update products with new values.

Using the improved import process, you can update 10K products in less than a minute, which is a huge improvement over the old dataflow method, which would take an hour to update that many products.
Good Luck!

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