Global Options Type - Link Vs Copy - Import Export

Store Builder Questions
1

After creating several Global Options I applied them to 80 products. This was accomplished within the Global Options section using the feature called Apply To Products.

It's a great feature that took only a short time to apply my options in one fell swoop. My thinking was if I needed to go back and edit or delete any of the options it could be done so easily within the Global Options section. For example, I might change a Global Option price in just one place and all products would reflect that price change.

Wrong.

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When using the Apply To Products feature it Copies the Global Options to each and every product in the selected list.

Turns out what I really wanted was Global Option Links instead. There is a big difference between Copy and Link.

Copy - Creates a "hard copy" of the options for each product.

Link - Ties the options for an individual product back to the Global Options. The idea being if you make a change to a Global Option all "linked" products automatically update with that change. Note: You cannot link a product to Global Options anyplace but within each individual product, one at a time. It cannot be done in bulk.

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Now I need to change all 80 products and doing an Export / Import seems a logical approach. Therefore, I need to:

[1] Delete existing "hard copy" options for each product

[2] Add new "linked" options for each product.

Upon Export I am able to see the options that are tied to each product, and I am also able to see something called Option Type in it's own column on the exported spreadsheet.

Option Type = P

One might guess changing the Option Type to "L" might do the trick. However, after hand editing a single product so it used Linked Global Options instead, and then exporting that product, it still shows Option Type = P.

There must be a better approach.

2

By the way, I am using CS-Cart 4.6.1

3

I stumbled upon an easy solution using Export / Import.

The exported options code looks something like this:

R[10ml///modifier=8.000///modifier_type=A,30 . . .

In this case, the "R" stands for Radio Button. (An "S" would be Select Box and so on.)

Turns out, editing the "R" will do the trick by changing it's value to "RG".

I'm guessing that stands for Radio Global, which essentially means it is Linked to the global options as opposed to being a hard copy. After adding the "G" to the product options and importing the file, all my products are now linked to the global options just as I wanted.

4

Just stumbled across this trick of adding the G to the option type to make the option a global option for the import. Wish i'd know about it ages ago. Shame it isn't in the documentation...

5

good share, thx