Importing products

Product import is the fastest way to upload or edit your catalog. Product import is based on CSV (comma separated values) files, which can be edited as spreadsheets.

CSV file basics

A CSV file contains plain text entries separated by delimiters. Each entry represents a cell in a spreadsheet, each line represents a new row, and each delimiter (comma, semicolon, or tabulation) indicates where one entry ends and another entry begins.

You can view and edit CSV files in plain text editors (e.g., Notepad for Windows, Sublime Text, TextEdit for Mac) or in spreadsheet editors (e.g., OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Google Sheets). Spreadsheet editors are generally more convenient.

Contents

Each line in a product import file represents a list of attributes (name, SKU, description, price, etc) associated with a certain product in your store. Each attribute is separated by a delimiter (comma, semicolon, or tabulation) that should be the same throughout the file.

The first line in the file may represent the column headers.

To see the import settings in your Ecwid store go to Ecwid Control Panel → Catalog → Products and click Import Products. Find the Skip First Line option:

Delimiters

Delimiters indicate where one product attribute ends and another one begins. Ecwid supports three delimiters in CSV files: commas, semicolons, and a tabulation.

Encoding

Ecwid supports more than ten charsets, including UTF-8, UTF-16, and US-ASCII. When you import your CSV file, please select the same encoding used in your CSV file for proper import.

Numbers format

Ecwid requires CSV imports to:

• use a dot (a full stop) to separate the decimals (e.g., 3.5 or 10.99)
• not use a separator for large numbers (e.g., 1350, not 1,350)

CSV file format

To see the import settings in your Ecwid store go to Ecwid Control Panel → Catalog → Products and click Import Products.

Product import in Ecwid recognizes 25 product attributes. This means your CSV may contain up to 25 columns. Here is a brief description of each attribute:

To find the ID of the shipping method you’d like to enable/disable for a product via import, click on that shipping method name in Ecwid control panel → Shipping & Pickup and copy its ID from the browser’s address bar. Example:

Alternatively, you can set up one product manually in the required way, export it, find IDs of the shipping methods enabled/disabled for it in the downloaded CSV file and use them in your import file.

Importing a CSV file

Once you’ve prepared your CSV file, go to Ecwid Control Panel Catalog → Products and click Import products.

In the import dialogue window:

1. Click Choose file and select the CSV file from your computer.
2. Select the delimiter used in your file (comma, semicolon or tabulation).
3. Select the character encoding used in your file:

4. Arrange columns (drag and drop) to mimic your file:

5. Uncheck the columns that are not used in the file.
6. Use the Skip column option to exclude up to three columns:

7. Check the option Delete all products and categories before import, if you want to clear the catalog before import.

Get a sample CSV file for import

Common errors

You may come across the following errors during import:

Sample CSV file

Download a sample product CSV file to use as a template for creating your own CSV files. It includes information about a sample product with comma-separated values.

You can import this sample file with the following options in import dialog:

Related articles

Guide to importing and exporting products
Importing customers
FAQ about importing products