How to save images from web links given in .xls file

Question

I have an xls file which has weblinks of product-images. The number is about 5000. Can you advise me how can I save these images on my computer. Given here below is a link just to narrate the example.

http://images.fragrancex.com/images/products/sku/big/1035W.jpg

All the images have the same type of links.

Answer 1

I assume you have all the links in a sigle column.

Copy the column that has the links and paste it in a new file, then save it as CSV (comma separated value). You'll end up with a plain text file containing one link per line.

Now open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), enter directory you saved the file (for example: cd Documents) and run:

cat <name-of-csv-file> | { while read; do wget $REPLY; done; }

Of course, replace <name-of-csv-file> with the CSV file name.

Answer 2

If you want it automated, you should create a script using an xls parser such as http://www.python-excel.org/ and then pass that to wget to download the file specified in the url.

This involves using a number of tools to automate this process.

Alternately if you don't think you have the skills (and don't know who to pay to write the script for you) you can copy the url and paste it into firefox and File > Save As, this might take some time to do manually.