Deleting Products and Variants
You can use Ablestar Bulk Product Editor to delete product or variants in bulk.
Options vs Variants
By default in Shopify, you can have three 'options'. 'Size' , 'Color' and 'Material' are common 'options'.
You can also have 100 'variants' in total. Common variants are 'small', 'medium', 'large', or 'red', 'green', blue'.
The Bulk Product Editor can delete individual 'variants', but not individual 'options'.
Choose if you prefer the 'In-App Edit' or 'Spreadsheet' method:
1. In-App Edits
To delete products or variants with an 'In-App Edit':
- Filter for the products you want to edit, and click on Edit Products
- In the 'Field to Edit' box select Delete Products or Delete Variants
2. Spreadsheet Edits
When deleting products or variants using a spreadsheet edit, you cannot undo an update to other products in the same spreadsheet edit. This is to prevent products from being deleted accidentally.
To delete items using a spreadsheet, click the Edit with a spreadsheet button from the dashboard. The spreadsheet should have two columns:
- An identifier column (SKU, Handle, Product ID, etc..)
- An 'action' column that contains the text
"delete"
A valid file looks like this:
When deleting individual variants, make sure the first column is a variant-level match field, like 'SKU', 'Variant ID', or 'Barcode'. To delete the entire product, you can use a product-level match field like 'Handle' or 'Product ID'.
✅ Tips and Troubleshooting
- Deleting products or variants is permanent. Please be absolutely sure you want to remove the products before proceeding.
- In many cases it is better to set the product's status to 'Archived'. This will hide the product but you can still recover it later, if needed.
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