When Importing duplicate categories are created

I was having the same issues yesterday and saw your post looking for a solution. Well this is my case and this is how I solved it.

The key is to know the system. CSV Importer uses Category TITLE for placing products in them. It does not use slugs. So, my problem was that I’ve been having issues regarding the use of accents. I’m a latin so I have lots of them. So, the import results had been giving me trouble because accents were replaced with other characters so I had to use HTML code for them. (Ex. &aacute for á). BUT I replaced those codes in every bit of my CSV data. MISTAKE.

So this is what I figured out. For product title, content, excerpt and tags, I can replace those accents with HTML code. BUT.

For categories do not attempt that. Leave them as they are. I don’t know if thats your case, but the text of the Category Title should be exact as you have in your Woocommerce. No codes, not a bit of difference, just as they are.

This brings out a question, what if I have two categories with the same title? (because you can have the same name in the title but not in the slug) Well I did some tests, and I think that the import starts looking in the category table in ascending order. So, it will use the first one it finds, meaning the first one you created or the one with the minor ID.

Hope this helps.