Editing Primary Barcodes (ISBN, UPC and GTIN)
You can use Ablestar Bulk Product Editor to modify Barcode (like ISBN, UPC or GTIN) fields in bulk. The Barcodes edit option can help you bulk edit all barcodes.
To add a list of barcodes or set specific types during the edit, see Editing Multiple Barcodes per Variant.
📹 Click here for a video walkthrough or choose if you prefer the 'In-App Edit' or 'Spreadsheet' method:
1. In-App Edits
Once your products are filtered and ready to edit, from the 'Configure modifications' view, specify the 2nd barcode option:
- Barcodes (all barcodes, with types) edits an list of multiple of barcodes.
- Barcode (ISBN, UPC, GTIN, etc.) edits only the primary barcode and keeps the others.
There are several 'How to edit' options available to bulk edit your barcode data:
Specify how you would like to edit the barcode field and add the text value in the bottom field.
Optionally, you can choose 'Add dynamic value' to pull in other data from your store, instead of manually inputting the term to be replaced. For example, if you want to set the barcode to be equal to the SKU. Learn more about Dynamic values here.
2. Spreadsheet Edits
For a spreadsheet edit you need to specify an identifier during upload and then the subsequent columns would be data to be updated, similar to:
| Handle | Barcode |
| handball-spezial-unisex | 10005 |
| handball-spezial-unisex | 10006 |
Excel sometimes automatically converts numbers to scientific notation like8.7986E+11. Click here for a quick solution.
The values are case-insensitive and leading/trailing spaces will be removed.
Barcode checks
Shopify checks barcodes that have a type. The app runs the same checks before it sends the edit to Shopify, because one invalid barcode makes Shopify reject the changes for all the variants sent with it.
| Type | Rules |
|---|---|
| UPC | 8 or 12 digits |
| EAN | 8 or 13 digits |
| GTIN | 8, 12, 13, or 14 digits |
| ISBN | 10 characters (the last one can be X), or 13 digits that start with 978 or 979. Hyphens and spaces are allowed. |
| ASIN | 10 letters and digits |
| NS-PID and Custom | Any text up to 255 characters |
UPC, EAN, GTIN, and ISBN barcodes also have a check digit, the last digit, which must match the other digits. A variant can't have the same barcode twice, even with a different upper and lower case.
If a barcode doesn't pass, the app doesn't change that variant and the edit log shows error EDT028. If an edit would give a variant more than 20 barcodes, the edit log shows EDT029.
✅ Tips and Troubleshooting
- Shopify will remove leading or trailing spaces from spreadsheet data
- Remember to always specify identifier data in the first column for spreadsheets
- Shopify has some helpful articles on how to generate printable barcodes.
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