Introduction to Importing CSV Files in PrestaShop

PrestaShop includes built-in functionality for importing a CSV file of certain types of data. This makes adding large amounts of data much easier than manually inputting data in the PrestaShop back office. While there are PrestaShop import modules available to streamline importing data, with a little bit of preparation, it is not necessary to install an additional module in order to import data into your PrestaShop store. Through the PrestaShop CSV Import tool you can import Products, Categories, Product Combinations, Customers, Addresses, Manufacturer, and Suppliers. The information in the following tutorials will give you a good foundation for working with any of these imports.

A CSV file type is a plain text file containing data that is separated into columns by a delimiter (the character that separates the data). While CSV refers to comma separated values, other characters can be used to separate data (e.g. semicolon, tab, etc.). Each row in a CSV file is a record. The columns in the file are the fields and those fields appear in the same order for each row.

Before going through the steps in these tutorials, make sure you have a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel, iWork Numbers, or OpenOffice Calc installed on your local computer. While you can use a text editor for viewing and editing CSV files, Spreadsheet programs are preferred because they make it easier to view and work with your data.

When working with CSV files to import into PrestaShop, there are two phases to the process. Before you can begin importing your CSV file, you have to create that CSV file and properly format that file. Once that phase is complete, you can then import it into PrestaShop. In the following tutorials, we walk you through both phases.