Uploading image files from your computer for use in import spreadsheets
For an image to upload correctly from an import spreadsheet it needs to be hosted on a website, and the image’s URL needs to be placed in the appropriate column within the spreadsheet.
If you have image files contained on your computer that you want to use for your product or category images, follow the instructions below to learn how to use ShopWired’s image hosting service to include them in your import spreadsheet.
• Uploading your images
• Adding the image URLs to your import spreadsheet
Uploading your images
The first part of the process is to upload the images to ShopWired’s image hosting service.
Step 1
To upload the images to ShopWired’s image hosting service you should first place all of the images you want to upload into a single folder on your computer.
The folder cannot contain subfolders. It will be helpful to you if you have named/renamed your files so they have relevant names to the image.
Long, random file names will be more difficult for you to manage later in the spreadsheet.
Step 2
Compress, or ‘zip’, the folder containing the images, so it is created as a zip file.
Maximum file size & image file names
The maximum size that the zip file is allowed to be is 1GB.
Image file names must not be greater than 100 characters or the image file will not import.
Step 3
Go to http://image-import.shopwired.co.uk in your web browser. On the page that loads select Choose file:
Attach the zipped file from your computer’s hard drive. Optionally you can enter your email address to be notified once the upload has finished, which you might want to do if your zipped file is particularly large (e.g. over 50MB).
Step 4
Select upload files. Do not close your browser window while the upload is processing as this will cancel your upload.
The file uploader will then either begin to process your file right away or place you in a queue to be processed shortly.
When your file is processing it will proceed through three separate stages: uploading your file to the server, unzipping the file and finally processing the images.
Please note: This process might take a while to complete. The time it takes to upload the file from your computer to the server is dependent on the speed of your internet connection.
Step 5
Once the upload is complete the website will display a unique upload ID for the file:
Make a note of your ID as you will need it on the spreadsheet.
Adding the image URLs to your import spreadsheet
Your next step is to enter the URLs for the images into your import spreadsheet.
Please note!
If your URL contains special characters (for example: ø, ü, é), then in order for the images to display you will need to ensure that your import file has been encoded as UTF-8. To encode your file as UTF-8 you can upload your file into Google Sheets (if not already using) and then download it as a 'Comma Separated Values (csv)' file. When downloaded in this format Google Sheets will automatically encode the file using UTF-8. If you are using Microsoft Excel to create your file, you can either upload the file to Google Sheets when finished or, if you are using a current version of Excel 'CSV UTF-8' will be available as a 'File Format' for you to choose when saving your file.
Image URL
The image URLs should all follow this formula: http://s3.shopwired.co.uk/X/filename.jpg
Replace the X in the example URL with the upload ID provided to you when you uploaded your images. Replace filename.jpg with the file name of an individual image.
For example, your URL might then look something like: http://s3.shopwired.co.uk/232/shoes.jpg
If your spreadsheet doesn't contain file names
If you haven’t already input file names into your spreadsheet, you can copy and paste your URL into each appropriate image field replacing each file name as you go.
If your spreadsheet does contain file names
If you have already input file names into your spreadsheet, you can use a concatenate formula within Excel to add in the beginning of the URL.
The formula would be ="http://s3.shopwired.co.uk/X/"&A1
It is important that you replace X with the upload ID provided to you when you uploaded your images, and that you replace A1 with the cell reference of the cell which contains the image file. Place this formula into a new (unused) column on the spreadsheet, and then copy and paste the value from the column (which contains the formula) into the image file column.
If image files are contained within multiple columns, you should repeat this process for each column.
Examples
Here are some example steps of how this process might look in Excel: