How to Find MAGMI Faults and Product Import Errors

Debugging MAGMI Product Imports

Before Running an Import

Always take a quick check of the total products shown on the Manage Products landing screen before running an import. This is shown as: ‘Total xxx records found’

MAGMI Error Trouble Shooting

If your import should be working but is giving errors, check the items below. Check and check again and you will often find that you have made some silly mistake despite being certain your work is perfect.

Basic Errors

  • Forgetting to Save Profile after making adjusts and then rerunning the import
  • Running with the ‘update existing’ option
  • READ THE RED ERROR panel. Proeprly. The more you are struggling to fix an import the more important it becomes for you to take a deep breath and read slowly thru the error screen.

EXCEL Issues

  • Expand those Column Headers to make sure that your column names are lowercase and properly spelled and reflect the actual names in your admin back-end.
  • Column Names – lowercase ALWAYS or should I say always!
  • Option values – lower case unless named with caps – like ‘Default’
  • Apostrophe’s – like ‘you've’ will cause MySQL horrible errors that are hard to find.
  • Spelling! Check the spelling of all standard name and values. This one ‘configuarable’ kept me guessing for 2 hours . It was part of a customer-supplied series of sheets that had all imported well until this one. Too quite a while to figure out that the word was suddenly misspelled.

Configurable items:

  • Watch out for the places in Magmi where the names of the sheets you are importing from are specified. I suggest that the best way is to use a single sheet, but however you choose to reference your configurables always check the THREE places where the file names are referenced in Magmi. Once on the main import screen and twice in the configurable processor.
  • Always, always re-check the names are correct again before running the import. Magmi often does not properly save the correct sheet names when there are multiple sheets in your import folder.
  • Sometimes with configurables, it needs two runs of the importer to properly connect the simples to the configurable parent. Do a quick check under Product Information – Associated Products tab to make sure your Associated products associations are being correctly honored by the import process.

SimpleConfigurableProducts

  • If you are using the SimpleConfigurableProducts extension, which makes the price in product pricing selection dropdowns work properly, you may find that the Reindexing operation fails on the Pricing Index.  This can be fixed by setting the module to inactive. The file to edit is in /app/etc/modules. Change the active flag to false while you are working and then turn it back on again when you’re done.

CSV File Malformations

Sometimes EXCEL exported cvs files become badly formed because of unseen or non-obvious issues in the source XLS(x) sheet. Best practice is to always inspect your csv before upload.

Often you will find issues with extra rows which are often empty or worse extra columns. Best option is to remove these with a text editor.

Good luck!