Search tips for in-app bulk product editing in Shopify
Effectively searching for products will save you time and make it quicker to use different parts of the app. This document contains tips that you can use to speed up workflow and save you more time.
The search bar
When you open up the app you will see the search bar where you can filter for the products you want to edit or export:
The search bar is similar to the standard search in the Shopify admin but has several unique features including:
- More search options
- Support for multiple text searches
- Finding products matching all conditions or any one of the conditions
Text searches
The quickest way to search for products is to type in some text and press Enter (or click the Search button). When you do this, the Bulk Editor app will search for products who have the text in one of these fields:
- Title
- Vendor
- Product Type
- Tags
- Description
While this is a quick way to find products, it might return some unexpected results and can be slower than using more specific searches.
If you are looking for products that match a specific field, we recommend using the Add filter + drop down.
Add filter drop down
When you click on the Add filter + drop down you can selected from an extended list of product and variant filters. In addition to filters for fields and metafields there's also some custom filters like:
- Compare Price is Blank
- Has Duplicate SKU or title
- Has/Doesn't have images
- Not in any Collection
- Not in any Manual Collection
- Price < Compare Price
- Price = Compare Price
- Price > Compare Price
Saved searches
You can save frequently-used searches by clicking on the + icon to the right of the tabs at the top of the search bar.
You can view, rename and delete saved searching by going to Settings -> Saved Searches in the left-hand menu. Learn more about saved searches.
Searching for only some variants of a product
When you search for a variant field (like price, option 1 value etc..) only the variants that match the product are selected. This way you can edit only some of the variants for a product.
When only some of the variants are selected the app will show how many of the total you have selected:
Clicking on the eye icon next to the variant number will open up a popup listing the exact variants that you selected.
Exclude products from a search
You can manually exclude individual products from the search results. To do so, click on the circle icon with the minus sign to the right of the product row. This icon will only appear if you already have other filters added to your search.
Toggle between products that match all filters and ones that match any filter
When filtering your products for an in-app edit, you can choose if the displayed products match all of your filters or if they match any one of your filters.
You can toggle this by on the icon to the far right of the 'Add filter +' dropdown.
Search for products with no tags
You can search for products with no tags by adding the following filter and typing the text [EMPTY] for the filter value:
- Field: Tag
- How: contains
- Value: [EMPTY]
Search for products with duplicate titles, SKUs, or barcodes
The app has three custom filters to help searching for products with duplicate titles, SKUs, or barcodes. The search results will include the all products with the duplicate values (ie, the original and the duplicate). You can use additional filters like 'Date created' or 'Handle ends with -1' to further narrow down your selection.
For more information please read our article on searching for duplicate titles.
Search for multiple SKUs or product IDs at once
- Field: SKU
- How: equals
- Value: a comma-separated list of the SKUs
If you're coping the SKUs from a spreadsheet they won't be separated with commas. In that case you can do the following
For example, adding a filter like this:
- Field: SKU
- How: contains and of the words
- Value: paste the column from your spreadsheet
The same technique will also work for product IDs if you select the 'Product ID' field instead.
If you have any other questions on how to filter for products please contact us and we would be happy to help you out.