Creating or Importing Products

Ablestar Bulk Product Editor allows you to create or import new products to your store, using a spreadsheet format. The 'Create products' section is for adding products to your store. If you want to edit products that already exist use a Spreadsheet edit instead.

Create Products

From the app dashboard, click the 'Create products' navigation menu and you will be prompted to upload a spreadsheet.

You can use any spreadsheet editing software to edit your data. We prefer using CSV file formats to help preserve numeric formatting but XLS formats also work most of the time.

Format Spreadsheet

Your spreadsheet should be formatted with a product-level identifier. Once your spreadsheet is formatted with product-level identifiers and variants, you are ready to upload.

In our example above, there are three products, and the first product (example-t-shirt) has two variants. All variants of the same product share the same 'Handle'. The product-level 'Handle' field groups the variants into one product.

The option labels are stored in the 'Option Name' fields (like 'Size' or 'Color), and the data for those options are stored in the 'Option Value' fields (like 'Small', or 'Red').

We are now able to support additional fields during import:

Image Alt Texts
SEO Meta Title
SEO Meta Description
Standard Product Category

Upload Spreadsheet

From the dashboard view, click 'Create products' from the navigation menu:

Click Drag & drop spreadsheet button to start upload

Import Type and Presets

From the 'Create products' view, choose the import type:

Create new products: creates a new product for every product in your spreadsheet
Add/update variants to existing products: adds or updates variants on products that are already in your store

For 'Create new products' you can also:

Add a tag to the new products in the 'Add Tag to New Products' field, for example 'import_001'
Set 'Website visibility for new products'. 'Not published' is set by default, and you can change it to 'Published' or 'Defined in spreadsheet' to use the value from your spreadsheet.

Important: 'Create new products' does not skip or update products that are already in your store. If a handle in your spreadsheet is already used by a product in your store, the app creates a second product and adds a random 4-digit number to the end of its handle (for example 'example-t-shirt-4821'). If you use the product title as the identifier, a product with the same title also gets a duplicate. Remove existing products from your spreadsheet before you import it, and use a Spreadsheet edit to update them.

Click the Save Preset button to save the configuration for your future imports

Map Columns

Specify the field names for the the importer to match:

Map columns: If spreadsheet column names do not match existing field labels in your store, click to specify the 'Shopify product field' label. The system will remember your naming conventions in future imports
Remove columns: (x) out of any columns you need to remove

When you are ready, click the Create Products button to start processing the import.

Once your processing is complete, you can click the Presets button to save your configuration for next time

Import History

Access your product history from the 'History' navigation menu → Imports tab:

Click any row to see the full detail of the import and from the detail view you have several options:

Download error log: see a full list of any error notifications
Edit Products: return back to your original product filter for further edits
More Actions → Rename: give your import a unique name that you can find more easily
More Actions → View configuration: see the upload configuration of your columns and fields

✅ Tips and Troubleshooting

New to bulk editing? Get started here
Duplicate products after an import? A handle with a 4-digit number at the end (for example 'example-t-shirt-4821') means the product was already in your store. See 'Import Type and Presets' above.
Learn more about Mapping Fields on import

(05.82)