Product ID for newly imported products using Export/Import Tool

After a little experimentation I figured out that when using Export/Import Tool new product ID's have to be sequential and unique. Not knowing what number to start with, I exported all products and found the largest product ID number being used and used something higher than that which worked fine.

Is there some way to automatically assign a value to product_id when importing new products from a spreadsheet or does a unique and sequential product ID series have to be entered for each new product in the list?

I will assume that there is not since nobody has responded to my question.

In case someone with the same question finds this post - I did learn that when adding new products, the product IDs of the new ones do not have to follow in exact sequence such as 456, 457, 458. They just have to be sorted from high to low. So you can add new products with various IDs as long as the rows are sorted from high to low on that column such as 1122, 1145, 2267, 3589 etc. Of course, the new typed in product IDs must be unique / not used already or it will fail.

Be aware that the highest number used at any given point will determine the next product ID if you create a product within the Admin panel. As far as I can tell, you can still create products with IDs that are less than the last / highest one, as long as they are listed in sequence from high to low in the spreadsheet.

Just wanted to clarify something, you said the sorting of the ID number needs to be high to low, but your examples are to be low to high (456, 457, 458 . . . 1122, 1145, 2267, 3589). So to be clear, the sorting needs to start at the smallest number and increase going down?

Also, does importing the spreadsheet require the ID number column be present, or can that column be left off, and the system automatically assign ID's?

Product ID is assigned automatically, when you add an entry to database, and always increments.