Formatting your spreadsheet
The Bulk Product Editor app allows you to edit products by uploading a spreadsheet. In this article, we'll cover how to format and prepare a spreadsheet that you can use to edit products.
In order to follow along, you should have:
- The Bulk Product Editor app installed on your Shopify store
- A program to edit spreadsheets like Excel or Numbers. You can also use Google Sheets (it's free!)
Spreadsheet Format
The spreadsheet should have a header row and at least two columns, but you can include as many as you need. The first column is always the match field, and will be used to locate products or variants to edit, with the remaining columns containing the data to modify.
When editing 'variant level' fields like 'price' or 'barcode', you will want to use a 'variant level' field as the match field. 'SKU' will work as a 'variant level' match field if it is unique. If you use the app to generate a spreadsheet that includes variant level fields, 'variant id' will be included as the match field.
'Handle', 'title', and 'product id' are 'product level' fields. These work well as match fields if you are editing other product level fields, like 'tags', 'description' or 'type'. If you use a product level match field to edit variant level data, all the variants will end up with the same data.
For example, if you wanted to edit the price and inventory levels based on SKUs, you would use a variant level match field, and your spreadsheet would look like this:
When the app reads your spreadsheet, it will go through each line, search for the product(s) matching the first column and set the values in the remaining columns. You will be able to choose which fields to search and edit when you upload the file to the app.
Excel or CSV File Format?
The Bulk Product Editor app supports Excel (xlsx) and CSV file formats. When you upload a file, the app will identify which format it is in and parse it accordingly.
That said, we recommend using the Excel format because it is more consistent and handles non-English characters much better. If you upload a CSV file and receive an error, try saving it as an Excel spreadsheet and upload it again.