FW Real Estate – Documentation

The CSV Import/Export addon adds a dedicated Import / Export panel to the FW Real Estate admin area, letting you bulk-create or update property listings from a spreadsheet and export your entire property database to a portable CSV file.

Where to Find It

Once the addon is active, navigate to FW Real Estate → Properties and open the Import / Export tab. The panel shows two cards side by side — Import on the left and Export on the right.

Exporting Properties

Click Export Data to CSV File to download a CSV containing all properties — published and unpublished — one row per property. Before exporting, choose a Language (controls which translation is used for text fields such as title and description) and optionally a Category to limit the export to a single category.

Multi-value fields such as amenities, categories, property types, and rooms are joined with a semicolon (;) within a single cell. The exported file is ready to open in Excel or any spreadsheet application.

Preparing a CSV for Import

The easiest starting point is an exported file — the header row already contains all recognised column names. If you are building a file from scratch, follow these rules:

• The first row must be a header row. Column names are case-insensitive.
• Columns can appear in any order. Unrecognised columns are silently ignored, so you can include notes columns without causing errors.
• Multi-value fields (amenities, categories, property types, rooms, etc.) must use semicolons as the internal separator.
• Lookup values such as status, city, heating, and garage type are matched by name. If a value does not exist in the component dictionary, it is created automatically.
• The rooms column uses pipe-delimited entries in the format width|depth|dimension_name|room_name|room_description, with multiple rooms separated by semicolons.
• Set the Delimiter option to semicolon if your file was saved by macOS or European versions of Excel; otherwise use the default comma.

Importing Images

Before importing, upload all referenced image files to the /tmp/import/ directory on the server. In the image column, list filenames only — no full paths. The addon copies each image to the property's gallery folder and automatically generates full, medium, and thumbnail sizes. Supported formats are JPG, JPEG, PNG, and GIF.

Insert vs. Update

When the id column is present and matches an existing property, that property is updated. If the ID is absent or not found, a new property is inserted. Re-importing the same file is safe — properties are updated rather than duplicated.

Address Geocoding

If a row does not include latitude and longitude values, the addon attempts to geocode the address automatically. Geocoding requires the Map View plugin to be installed, enabled, and configured with a valid API key. Without it, the import still completes but coordinates remain empty.

Practical Tips

• Large imports may time out on shared hosting even though the addon removes PHP execution time limits. Split very large files into batches of a few hundred rows if you encounter issues.
• Translatable fields — including property title, address, property desc, and meta descr — are saved for the Language you select at import time. Run separate imports to populate additional languages.
• Which columns appear in an export depends on which addons are active. The rooms column, for example, only appears when the Rooms addon is enabled.

To install this addon, open the Add-ons panel inside FW Real Estate. See Getting Started → Add-ons for details on free addons, paid addons, and site verification.