Magento: Importing Categories, Multiple Images & Product Attributes

The following tutorial is part of a step-by-step guide for Magento importing. Consider revisiting the previous tutorials, as they may help complete this one.

1. Fast Magento Product Imports with Magmi
2. Magento Raw Product CSV Creation & Basics
3. Configurable Product Imports
4. Multiple Product Images, Attributes and Sub-/Category Imports
5. Custom Options and Tier Pricing
6. Creating Products in Bulk via Spreadsheet (Pending)

Importing Images, Categories and Attributes with Magmi

To import images and categories into Magento via Magmi, you will require the Magmi extended plugins which is also free and can be downloaded from their repository. After that's setup, you'll just have to check the options you would like to include in your imports (see below image).

Here are the instructions for the corresponding data-imports:

Import Product Attributes

Importing product attributes is relatively easy and works out-of-the-box. You first have to create the attributes, which is done via the Magento's admin backend, at Catalog->Attributes->Manage Attributes. After creating the attribute, you simply need to add the Attribute Code as a new column in your CSV spreadsheet and add values per product below that.

Product Categories and Subcategories

After applying the settings for the On the fly category creator/importer, you just have to add the header named categories to your spreadsheets columns. For each category you want to create, you simply add the category name (not the ID), for example Electronics. To import category trees/subcategories, you can separate categories with a forward slash / by default, like so: Electronics/Computer Accessories/Keyboards. You choose whether products should be imported to all categories in the tree, or just to the last one via the Magmi settings prior to importing.

You can also assign products to multiple categories, and add category specific settings. To import a product into multiple categories per row, simply separate each category branch with ;;, for example: Electronics/Computer Accessories/Keyboards;;On Sale/Keyboards.

Importing Multiple Images

The way Magmi imports images works the same as Dataflow, yet comes with a larger set of options. For the basic inclusion of an image per product, you simply have the fill the columns image, small_image and thumbnail with the file path and name of the image. The file path is relative to the media/import folder, so if your file path in the spreadsheet is /electronics/keyboard.jpg, then the image should be uploaded to root/media/import/electronics/*.

Magmi adds the feature to import multiple images per product, which works by adding the column image_gallery, and adding as many file url paths separated by a semicolon ";". More options can be found by pressing the documentation link for this option.