Magmi on Magento 1.4.2CE visibility always catalog&search + error w/page_layout & options_container

Question

I'm relatively new to Magmi but have had to mess with EDI and csv files on many different systems over the years... I have only been importing simple products with magmi for starters and have a couple of questions/problems

At first all of my imported new products were available in every store view (we have 5) and I now realize from the docs that's because it was set to "admin", however under visibility, everything shows up visible in both catalog and search, even if it is set only to "catalog" in the csv or as "not visible individually". This is problematic for certain semi-private category products and for configurable child-products. I'm sure there is a simple explanation but I can't find it.

Also, I messed up yesterday. I copied 20 lines from a products master export, made a new worksheet and edited most of the fields to reflect a case of that product - every field except sku itself. I imported it (set to create and update because create itself skipped all 20 sku's - of course) and it updated my original product. I made a fresh csv with the original 20 lines and reimported it, the products look fine - except...

Now when I export from a master export profile in magento it does it but I get errors for the 20 skus that I can't quite decipher (referencing options_container and page_layout)- it looks like this http://tinyurl.com/mp5g27v

Any insight would be great

Answer 1

You simply forgot to use "Generic Mapper" plugin in your import profile.

Generic Mapper is a plugin that allows recognizing "text values" for fields that are meant to store numeric values. And has to be used to handle standard magento export format which exposes localized textual values.

see plugin documentation

When selected, this plugin will handle all standard mappings used by magento ( visibility, page_layout, options_container , aso...)