WP Sheet Editor contains an Import tool that allows you to import content that you have migrated from other websites, create new content from a CSV file, and update existing content.
1- How to open the “Import” tool
You can open the tool by clicking Import on the top toolbar.
2- Select the CSV you’ll import
The Source field allows you to decide where the CSV file you’ll upload is located:
- CSV from my computer
- CSV file from URL
- Copy & paste from another spreadsheet or table
- CSV file in your server
Here we explain to you how each source option works:
a) CSV file from my computer
If you upload the CSV from your computer, you need to click Choose File, search for the file on your computer, and hit Next.
b) CSV file from URL
You need to paste the URL of the CSV file in the File URL field and hit Next.
This accepts internal and external URLs.
c) Copy & paste from another spreadsheet or table
You can use this option if you want to copy some information from one spreadsheet or table into WP Sheet Editor.
The first row that you paste must contain the column titles.
However, you must take into account that this is not recommended for large amounts of data, if you have large amounts of data, importing a CSV File is better.
Once you paste the info, hit Next.
d) CSV file in your server
If you select this option, the CSV file must be uploaded to your server and you enter the path of the physical file here.
For example, this is a valid path: /var/www/site.com/htdocs/file.csv
Once you do that, hit Next.
2- Select the columns you want to import
To select which columns you will import, you have at least two options:
- Import all the columns – All the columns will be mapped automatically.
- Select individual columns to import
If you don’t want to import specific columns, you can select Ignore this column in the dropdown or by clicking on the X button next to each column.
If you manually map some columns, you can activate the option “remember column mapping” at the bottom of the popup, so the next time you upload a CSV file with the same column titles, we know how to map them automatically. We’ll only remember the connected columns, ignored columns won’t be remembered.
For example, if your CSV file contains the column “name” and you manually connect it to the WP field “Title”. When you use the “remember column mapping” option, we’ll automatically connect “Name” with “Title” the next time.
3- Configure how you will import the content
After manually or automatically mapping the columns, you need to configure how you will import your content into your WordPress site.
Here are the options you have:
- Create new items and update existing items
- Import all rows as new
- Only create new items, ignore existing items
- Update existing items, ignore new items
If you select any option other than Import all rows as new, you will need to indicate how to connect the CSV rows with the WP rows.
You can do this by selecting the CSV column and the WP column that we’ll use for finding the existing rows in WordPress. For example, if you want to update rows by ID, you can select the ID column in the CSV file and the ID column in WP. If you want to update users by email address, you can select the email address in the CSV File and email field in WP.
4- Finish the import / select advanced settings
In the final step, you’ll be shown a preview of how the info will look once the import is complete.
If everything is OK, hit The preview is fine, start import.
You’ll also see the Show advanced options checkbox, which allows you to configure these options:
- Number of rows to process per batch. You can enter a number of items your server will update in each batch. Consider the speed/resources of your server.
- Start from row number. If you stop an import to edit your CSV file or change the import speed, you can start a new import and continue from where you left off.
- Decode quotes? Mark for yes, unmark for no. This is when your CSV file has encoded quotes and the values aren’t read properly
- Auto retry failed batches. We import the file in batches (i.e. 4 rows every few seconds). When one batch fails, we normally pause the import and ask you if you want to retry or cancel the import. Select this option to auto retry. Careful, you should use this ONLY if you are updating existing rows (step 3 of the import). If you’re importing everything as new rows, every retry might duplicate some previously imported rows.
- Set post status to “pending” if featured image saving failed? This option works only if you are importing the featured image column into a post type and saving the featured image failed.
You can also check our tutorial to understand the “Export” tool.