[intro]Before you begin this Guide, you must have manually category-managed a Product on your EKM online shop beforehand using this Guide and installed the Import/Export System feature which will enable you to create a spreadsheet to work from.[/intro]

Category Management is a term we use for how Products are displayed on your EKM online shop. Products ‘live’ in one place, which is typically a Category or the Homepage. However, using Category Management, you can have one Product display in more than one Category, which increases its exposure and encourages additional sales.

1. To begin, you need to export your products to a spreadsheet by following the steps in this Guide. When you have opened the file, you should have a spreadsheet which looks something like this. The first thing you need to do to the spreadsheet is to add the ‘Edit’ command so that when you upload the file back to your EKM online shop, the system knows that some extra details have been added to an existing Product:

2. Click the A column to highlight it, and then click the Find & Select icon on the top right-hand corner:

3. In the drop-down menu, select Replace:

4. In the window that appears, add the word ‘Product’ in the Find What field and the words ‘Edit Product’ in the Replace With field, before clicking the Replace All button:

5. This action will amend the ‘Product’ and ‘Product Variant’ rows to read ‘Edit Product’ and ‘Edit Product Variant’ accordingly. When you upload your spreadsheet onto your EKM online shop, the system will be aware that some of the data for the Products has been amended.

Category managing your Products

6. Your first step is to scroll along your spreadsheet until you find the CategoryManagement column:

7. In my example, some of my Products have already been assigned to live in more than one Category. You can see some of these on rows 29 and 31:

8. The format for data added to cells within this column is as follows - remember to replace the square brackets and their contents with the name of one of your existing Categories:

Home > [Main Category]

If you wish to add the Product to a Subcategory, the format would be:

Home > [Main Category] > [Subcategory]

If you wished to add the Product to more than one Category at once, you would separate the Category paths with a colon, but with no spaces on either side, like this:

Home > [Main Category] > [Subcategory]:Home > [Main Category]

[tips]When you are category managing your existing Products on a spreadsheet, you only need to add the Additional Categories on the Edit Product rows - and not Edit Product Options or Edit Product Variant. It’s a lot easier to do if you highlight the Edit Product rows in a bright colour - like yellow for example - to differentiate these from the rest of the rows. You can do this by clicking the number of a row to highlight it all, and then clicking the bucket symbol to select a bright colour to highlight it with:

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9. Following the formats listed above, you need to populate the relevant rows in the CategoryManagement column accordingly, assigning Additional Categories to your Products. When you have finished working on your spreadsheet, you need to save it by clicking the File button in the top left-hand corner as normal:

10. Now you have finished working on your spreadsheet, the next step is to upload it onto your EKM online shop.

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[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]