I'm working with a client to get their site more visitor friendly and functional. One aspect of that is proper categorization of their products. They currently have over 4,500 products input and the categorization is a mess. Their input people categorized the newly input products under their own "temp" names & categories. These are not active, and not under the proper overall category either.
 
- Is their any way to modify the categories en mass by import or sql updates? The one by one click through is painful and would take forever.
- Could updates be done without re-importing/updating all the fields in the database?
- Is there a simpler way to add/change the current categories on the existing products?
- Many of the products needing changes have subcategories that could be kept. We just need to reassign the top level categories.
 
Any help here is greatly appreciated. This is currently a critical matter.
 
Thank you,
Shawn Blair
printerfarm@pebc.biz

We had the same challenge, 200 categories and 5000 products. Here's how we did it:
 
1) Setup "product types" and "specification groups"
2) Using the admin interface, create 1 "category" and 1 "product" for each of the product types you defined (be sure to import images and enter data into every product and spec field you will be using so your export has a good reference example)
3) Export your category into a csv file.
4) Using Excel, create your cat and sub cat list. We used 5 digit cat and sub cat numbers to make creating the product db easier on the brain. I.e 10000, 11000, 12000 for the main cats, and 10100, 10200, 10300 for sub cates, and 10110, 10210... and so on for sub-sub cats. A lot of this may be cut and paste. Save as .csv file
5) Export your products (be sure to select all fields, particularly the specs) Enter the data into a spreadsheet. (This is where you'll find the logical cat and subcat numbering useful, particularly if you break the job up between a few people).
6) Import you category and product files.
7) FTP your product images into the appropriate directories.

Thanks for the feedback. I've taken a look at the product types and specification groups, but I'm unclear how that will help the search and categorization of the products.
 
I get the categories that you've created and they simplify the setup process... But, how does that help your visitors find what they're looking for? Am I missing something in how you described your setup? Are the numbers you're using the categeory ID?.
 
Regarding the specifications... the manuals are a bit confusing. Are these specs included in the product record somewhere? If so, are they included in the fields being searched by the search tool?
 
Appreciate your help on this. I've spent a lot of time on the ViArt, and there is still much to learn.
 
Regards,
Shawn