How to associate or mass-add accessories to PrestaShop product sheets

How to associate products from PrestaShop admin (1.7)

It's not especially complicated, but hyper-long just for one association:

1. Go to the "Catalog" section.
2. Then go to the product list.
3. Find the parent product.
When the product appears in the list of proposals, select it.
4. Don't forget to save if you're done with this product, otherwise start again at step 6 to add another accessory.

How to add accessories en masse (cross-association between products)

Nothing complicated with Merlin, and so much quicker:

1. Display and select parent products.
2. Select categories in which to search for accessories.
3. Select all accessory products to link to parent products (there are various methods for quickly filtering them).
4. Check one of the boxes in this column to make the parent-child association (products at the bottom become accessories to those at the top.
5. One more click in one of the boxes in this other column to make a cross-mass association. Products at the top also become accessories to those at the bottom.

Here we've linked together all the products in the "Hummingbird" range. Increasing the chances, for example, that when we sell a cushion, we'll also sell the matching notebook and illustration. This is what we call cross-selling.

How to copy, share or merge accessory lists between products

Let's imagine for a second that you sell vegetables, and incidentally Swiss vegetable peels (not easy to find, but excellent! small idea for a commercial niche if you're tempted). In short, let's imagine that you have 5 different models of these famous knives and have already associated them with all your vegetables, thanks to Merlin or more patiently with PrestaShop.
And then, lo and behold, your wholesaler delivers 15 new varieties of old vegetables, so you'll have to redo 5x15, i.e. 75 associations.

Method 1, with PrestaShop, it's easy, just do 75 times the operation described in paragraph 1 :-)) See you tomorrow for the rest.

Method 2, with Merlin and the method described in paragraph 2. Already much better.

But there's a method 3 with Merlin, even faster, copy and paste the list of accessories from one of your current vegetables, to the 15 new products, in 4 clicks! :

1. Select the 15 new items, plus an older one that already contains the accessories.
2. In the "Accessories list" column (if necessary use the column configurator to add it), right-click in the cell containing the list of accessories to be shared.
3. Choose the penultimate line of the menu, to paste this list into the other selected lines.
4. Two choices are offered, by default the list is merged with any other accessories already associated with the target products. The second choice deletes existing associations and replaces them with those of the product used as a template:

Video explaining step-by-step how to quickly associate products with the PrestaShop Merlin Backoffice module (in French)

This tutorial is structured in three main parts:

1. How to make cross-associations between products in bulk.
2. How to copy and merge accessory lists between various products.
3. How to import accessory lists from CSV or Excel files.

Increase the resolution to 720p if the video is too blurry, replay it in Auto if it freezes.