It's really convenient to have a list of all of your orders in one place. If you have previously used another system for e-commerce, you don't want to have to log in to multiple accounts to see whether someone made a purchase at one time. You also want all of your analytics in one place. It would be a shame to not see the growth of your store in one graph. You want to have all of that data in one place so you can get the most out of reports.
For these reasons, WooThemes released an importer to help users import their orders, customers, and even coupons.
You'll need the Customer/Order/Coupon CSV Import Suite plugin, available on WooThemes.com, installed and activated on your site.
You'll also need a CSV file to import. A sample CSV file you can import will be covered in this recipe.
The first part of the recipe is making sure your CSV is in the right format. The easiest way to copy the right format is to download the sample file and then use that as a base.
- From the WordPress admin, go to WooCommerce | CSV Customer Import Suite.
- Click on Sample Order CSV and it will be downloaded.
- Open the downloaded file in a program such as Microsoft Excel, Numbers on Mac, or Calc in Google docs (this can be accessed for free via your web browser).
Once you've opened up the file you'll see a giant list of fields. Along the top will be the field labels. And the others rows will have some dummy data in them. All of the dummy orders in this are formatted correctly, so if your CSV file looks similar to this, then it should import correctly:
You can either delete the dummy order data and manually type in your orders or, if you have a ton of orders and that's too much work, you can use your existing CSV and then rename the headers along the top so they match the headers in the dummy CSV.
Formatting the CSV can take some time and, if you name a column incorrectly, it could create problems down the line. If you have problems importing some data, it's most likely because a column was incorrectly labeled or the value in the column isn't in the right format.
Once you have the CSV file in the right format, you can import it by performing the following steps:
- From the WordPress admin, go to WooCommerce | CSV Customer Import Suite.
- Click on Import Orders.
- Fill in the Choose a file from your computer field.
Note
You could use the OR enter path to file field, but that involves uploading a file via FTP and there could be permission issues. It's far easier to use the regular file picker. The Delimiter field is there in case your CSV file, for some reason, uses a different character to separate the fields. A CSV file is so named because all of the values should be separated by a comma (Comma Separated Values), but some systems do use a semicolon or other separators for separating values. You should be able to choose a delimiter when you save or export a CSV file when using an application such as Microsoft Excel, Mac Numbers, or Google Docs. When in doubt, just leave the delimiter as a comma.
- Click on Upload file and import. You'll be taken to an advanced settings screen.
- If you're trying to import the sample file, you'll most likely have to check the Allow Unknown Products setting.
- Click on Submit.
The upload will start. It may take a while if you have hundreds or thousands of orders. When you're done, you'll see a report that will tell you whether there were any problems:
If you find any problems, you can delete the successful orders in the CSV, double-check whether the incorrect orders are in the right format, and then retry the upload.
When you're done, you should be able to see the orders by clicking on WooCommerce in the main menu of the WordPress admin.