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Importing Customers Into Magento From ZenCart

Once again we use a CSV file to import existing customers into our new Magento shop.

Firstly create a test customer and add an address for them.

Export the file. This we will use as our template.

ZenCart doesn’t have a CSV file for customer details but it does have similar fields in the database and this can be accessed through your server. I go through cPanel and select phyMyAdmin.

The two fields you need are address_book and customers. Select your database then, at the top of the screen select export.  Select address_book, check the CSV  option (or CSV for excel) and save the file. Repeat for customers.

You now have two separate files with all the necessary information to be able to compile a Magento customer file ready for importing.

It is then a case of copy and pasting from the zencart customers into your Magento CSV template. To do this faster combined the two files into one.

Open your address files then select the first blank cell at the end of the data – mine was M1.  Then select data, from other text, your customers file and insert as comma separated into your worksheet starting at the first blank cell (M1 in my case).

Now read across and the customers details should more or less match. Basically name, address, email and password login.

For those lines that do not match I delete the first few cells on a row (A-L) and shift them up. Usually that realigns them. Doing it this way every line will need to be checked carefully for the correct customers details but it will save time copying and pasting later on as we can now do entire columns in one go.

Once finished delete the CSV files as this is information that, while secure on a host, is not secure on a personal computer.

Export ZenCart products, Import Magento products: Summary

Here is a summary of the CSV file downloaded from ZenCart, edited then uploaded to Magento.

If you are new to Magento you may wish to read first my previous posts on importing basic products into Magento from ZenCart, configuring the Magento CSV file and importing categories and images.

Overview:

Creating a Magento product CSV from a ZenCart file is straightforward and easy.

I open a sample Magento file and then copy and paste the Zen-cart columns, deleting the column when it is copied over to keep track.

Then simply bulk copy and paste the remaining Magento specific rows – it only takes about 4 copy and pastes. Change the image details then sort out the categories. Upload and done.

Magento Headings    Information Required               ZenCart Equivalent

store                            default: admin

websites                    name of every website using this product

eg myweb1, myweb 2 (comma separated)

attribute                    Default

type                             simple

category_ids           the number of the category     v_categories_name_2

simply find and replace to convert them

sku                               model number/stock code       v_products_model

has_options             0

name                            product name                          v_products_name_1

meta_title  meta_description   url_key url_path page_layout options_container

I leave all these blank although you could copy and paste them from your ZenCart database if you wanted.

gift_message_available  default: Use config

price                            cost for buyers                                    v_products_price

special_price  /  cost    I leave these 2 blank

weight                         weight for shipping purposes  v_products_weight

status                          Enabled           ensure this is set for all products else they do not show

tax_class_id            Taxable Goods

is_recurring             No

visibility                   Catalog, Search

enable_googlecheckout           set all to Yes or No if you want to use Google checkout

description              product description                 v_products_description_1

short_description     either copy in description again or leave blank (I leave it blank)

meta_keyword custom_layout_update  special_from_date   special_to_date news_from_date news_to_date            custom_design_from  custom_design_to

I leave all these blank

qty                              number in stock                       v_products_quantity

The following depend on your set up. Most will be 0 or 1. Below is mine:

min_qty                    0

use_config               1

is_qty_decimal       0

backorders              0

use_config_backorders           1

min_sale_qty         1

use_config_min_sale_qty       1

max_sale_qty        0

use_config_max_sale_qty       1

is_in_stock              1

low_stock_date     ( I leave this blank)

notify_stock_qty     0

use_config_             1

manage_stock        0

use_config_manage_stock      1

stock_status_changed_automatically 0

use_config_qty_increments    1

qty_increments     0

use_config_enable_qty_increments    1

enable_qty_increments           0

product_name             I don’t know why this appears again copy  and paste column H name

store_id                     1

product_type_id   simple

product_status_changed         I leave this blank

product_changed_websites    I leave this blank

image                          /image.jpg        v_products_image

Use the image name with the / and ensure jpg is lower case.  If you have directoryname/image.jpg then simply find and replace all directoryname/ with / to leave /image.jpg

Copy all the image files to /media/import and ensure permission on the files is 777.

small_image            copy and paste column from image

thumbnail                 copy and paste column from image

Export ZenCart products, Import Magento products Part 3

Categories in Magento

It was frustrating setting this up and whatever I did the categories would not show on the main page.

The best thing I found was to ignore the default category and not use it, instead make your own default category. I called mine Main Products and then created subcategories (which will be the main categories of the shop) called Consumer Electronics and Outdoor Fun and Games. Subcategories of these were then made which will form the drop down menus on the front page.

Then  simply ensure the shop view uses these categories.

Use the menu:

System>Manage Stores>Store name

then select Main Menu as the categories.

Fairly simple in the end but took a lot of patience to get there. Another Magento user unfriendly feature.

Next task is to copy and paste the CSV from ZenCart products to product numbers.

It should be straightforward to find and replace the old category name with the new category number. In Magento simply click on the category in the admin menu and it shows the ID number at the top of the edit page.

Images.

Magento appears to handle images well so I am not going to use thumbnails or different sizes but only one image and let Magento handle resizing.

They can be copied over from ZenCart quite easily using the information from v_products_image. You probably have something like a products directory and imagename.jpg so your CSV file looks like products/imagename.jpg

Copy the complete image directory with all your image files to /media/import/

Mine is therefore media/import/products/.  Copy and paste the Zencart CSV column to  the Magento CSV column called image. In the Magento CSV column the directory name needs to start with / so simply do a find and replace on the whole column. I did find products/ and replace with /products/.  If you use the Zencart small medium and large image sizes you will also need to find and replace .jpg with _LRG.jpg otherise you are almost done.

small_image            copy and paste column from image

thumbnail                 copy and paste column from image.

Thats it!