Spreadsheet export Free

Praetor → Import / export → Spreadsheets. Pick what you want, press Export as CSV, and save the file.

This is a different tool from the configuration export beside it. That one takes everything as a single JSON file and is the lossless shape — the right thing for a backup or a move to another site. This one takes one kind of thing as a table, and is the right shape for five hundred lead times.

What can be exported

The list shows what your site has. On a standard install that is lead times, quantity rules, discounts and checkout fields; a module you have switched off does not appear, and neither does one that is not part of your edition.

With Pro, trade prices and order routing join the list. Trade prices are the reason this feature exists — a shop running three tiers over four hundred products has twelve hundred of them, and they usually arrive from the buyer as a spreadsheet in the first place.

Some things are deliberately not on the list. Access policies, product option groups and document numbering are not row-shaped: a shop has a handful of access policies rather than hundreds, and flattening a handful of hand-written policies into columns makes them harder to read, not easier. Those stay in the control centre and in the full configuration export.

The columns are shown above the button before you download anything, so you can hand them to whoever maintains the spreadsheet.

Every row carries its id

The first column is uuid. It is how a row is recognised when the file comes back, and it is why an export you edit and re-import updates those rules rather than making a second copy of each one.

Leave it alone. A row with an empty uuid is a new rule — which is exactly what you want when you are adding rows to the bottom of the file yourself.

One row is one rule with one condition

A rule with several conditions, or several actions, does not fit a row. Those export with the first of each and a name you can find them by, and the full detail stays in the configuration export.

Praetor tells you how many rows that applies to when you export, so you are never holding a file that looks complete and is not. Those rows also cannot be imported back — writing one would be indistinguishable from you deleting the conditions it could not carry, and Praetor will not guess that. Edit those rules in the control centre and use the spreadsheet for the many simple ones.

Opening it in Excel

The file is UTF-8 with a byte order mark, so accented characters and currency symbols open correctly rather than as mojibake.

A value that begins with =, +, - or @ is written with a leading tab. Spreadsheets treat those characters as the start of a formula, and a rule name somebody typed is not a formula — the tab makes the spreadsheet show the text instead of running it. If you see one, that is what it is.