Batch Delete of Products

[joseibarra]

Let's say I have 10000 products in my store.

Once a week, I get an update feed from my supplier with product changes.

Using the product list from last week and the new product list, I can generate a Miva import file to update current items (price updates) and add new items.

My process will also generate a list of items that were in the previous list that are not in the current list - those would be products that my supplier no longer carries and they need to be dealt with in Miva (somehow).

If I wanted to take that list of items that are no longer carried from my supplier and batch delete them from Miva, how would I go about doing that?

I think I would just have a file with a list pf product numbers and somehow tell Miva to delete them.

I suppose I could just update them to inactive and they would accumulate in some inactive pile until someday I decide to go through all the inactive items and decide what to do with them so they are not confusing.

At some point though I need to come up with a list of things that I just want to delete in Miva and be done with it.

I don't want to manually delete 50 items one by one every week - I would rather tell Miva, here is a file with 50 rows in it, go and delete these 50 items.

I may just decide to update them to inactive, but I will just be accumulating inactive items that will be confusing - at some point, I will just want to delete perhaps hundreds of items in one fell swoop.

What is the most efficient way to do that?

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

There is a remove/delete option in the Merchant Product Import feature (at least that what i've thought i've seen).

[joseibarra]

Re: Batch Delete of Products

If there is, it is not obvious to me, but my head is swimming these days.

Maybe it is someplace I am not looking.

I do see this possible hint in the help:

Replace Existing Products

Completely replaces all of the information about included products with new information from the flat file.

If you were doing a major cleanup for all the products in one category you could import entirely new information for those products. Any information not included in the flat file, if you did not specify a cost, would be deleted.

So does that mean if I take a file of items to delete, set the cost to be empty and then do the import and use replace existing, those items are deleted entirely from Miva, marked for deletion, etc.?

If I have 50 lines of discontinued product numbers in a file, how do I delete them entirely in a batch.

[joseibarra]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

Prodcuts? You know I mean Products

[papi34]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

Sebenza has a Product Delete Import Module. Works great.

[joseibarra]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

I would like to be able to accomplish my task using functionality that is already in Miva.

Is it not possible to delete a batch of products in the manner described using current Miva functionality?

[ocpxc02]

Re: Batch Delete of Products

I'm looking for a quick way to do this as well. Is the verdict that there is no way to do this via import? I use quite a few modules, but this seems like a no-brainer to include in the base product.

If someone from Miva's watching, can this be added to a future release?


Thanks,
Paul

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

There is, on your Products screen, along the top, there are two check boxes with the label Remove above them. Display the products you want using "search", click the + check mark, then click update. Every listed product is deleted.

[ocpxc02]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

Bruce - Thanks for the response. However, I'd really like to be able to simply import a list of products that should be deleted from the database. I really have no good way from within the Admin to select the records I want to delete.

It just seems odd that this feature still isn't part of the package. I may be wrong, but it seems like this would be simpler than the existing code used to add/update them.


Paul

[joseibarra]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

I would like to be able to swoosh through and do about 100 at a time every week!

Now, I have learned a little about "inventory" and mark the items out of stock and display a generic message and that works okay I guess, but some things I just want to get rid of permanently. I can do all that with an import, but I would rather be able to whack them all at once instead of finding them one at a time and clicking some box.

Somebody thought you set the price to zero or something like that, but I don't think that is true. I want to delete the stuff, not change the price.

If I have a category with 100 items in it and the product numbers all change, I would like to export the 100 rows, whack the current 100 items in Miva leaving me with zero items in that category, change (or correct) the 100 rows in the spreadsheet to have the new part numbers and import them in to repopulate the category with 100 "new" items (only the product number has changed).

Or, I could use Miva to update the product and save it, then do the next one and save it, then do the next one and save it...

[Biffy]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

Could you just flag them inactive and then batch delete all inactives in admin?

We're currently testing an application that will move your orphaned images to a separate directory where you can archive or delete them. These things can really pile up with rapid inventory turnover.

[delcorsets]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

A little off topic, but I'd love to hear more about your application to take care of orphaned images when it's ready...

[lesliekirk]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

There is, on your Products screen, along the top, there are two check boxes with the label Remove above them. Display the products you want using "search", click the + check mark, then click update. Every listed product is deleted.

Bruce - real pain when you have to delete 100K+ products...trust me I know.

Leslie

[yovation]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

When I have hundreds of products that need to be deleted, I update the product name to 'deleteme' via the flat file import. Then I search for the products with the 'deleteme' name and delete them all. It's a 2 step process but does get the job done.

Would that work for you?

David

[sbronstad]

Re: Batch Delete of Prodcuts

Here's a thought... change the name field of the products you want to delete to "DELETE", and mark the "active" field with a zero. Import the text. Now search for products with "DELETE"... Check the box to remove all, and update...