Solved

Removing 'Shopify Legacy App' data source from my Facebook Catalog

Richard_James
Tourist
9 1 17
Hi,
 
I'm hoping someone can help as I've been banging my head against a wall today on this one!
 
I'm managing a Shopify store with the legacy sales channels into a FB catalog, there is a data feed source called Shopify Legacy app, it contains 40 expired products and I can't remove the products or the feed. How can I remove this to remove the expired products with are bloating my catalog and showing in the store on my IG profile? I have the products I want live in a separate feed working fine, I just need to remove this one.
 
Screenshot 2021-01-18 144114.png
 
The app was created via the default Shopify Facebook integration (Sales Channel:Facebook).
 
I have followed the directions here (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/428079314773256) for deleting a feed, but it has had no effect, I still see 40 products listed. I don't see any app with the associated app ID in my business manager account. It was set up by a colleague, so one theory is the app is visible under his personal business manager.
 
Any pointers or help much appreicated as I've been going round in circles on this one!
Accepted Solution (1)
Richard_James
Tourist
9 1 17

This is an accepted solution.

Hi Everyone,

I've managed to remove the Legacy Data Feed by deleting my FB commerce account and creating a new commerce account. The outdated products have now gone. There are some risks associated with this so check before you do this. However, the situation is fixed for me now and the new commerce account was approved almost instantly so I had no down time for my ads or FB store. So I'm pretty happy with the result!

Risks:

  •  All your ads associated with the catalog will stop and you will need to duplicate and add the new catalog as you can't change a catalog once an ad is live
  • All your product tagged IG posts with products from your catalog will need to be retagged as tags will be deleted.
  • You will need to recreate any product sets you use for ads 

How I did this:

  • Go to : https://business.facebook.com/commerce_manager/
  • Click manage list in the screenshot below and delete the catalog associated with your commerce account. When deleted it should remove the commerce account too.
  • Go over to Shopify and run through the steps on the Facebook sales channel to set up a new commerce store. 

Richard_James_2-1618331518760.png

Let me know how you get on.

View solution in original post

Replies 23 (23)

YaniG
Visitor
1 0 0

Hi!  I'm a Shopify/FB user, too.  I'm looking at the Shopify Legacy app in Facebook, and I'm planning on removing it, since it's obsolete and I've set up the new Facebook app through Shopify.  I'll tell you the steps I'm taking, and I'm hoping this helps you out - 

In FB's Business Integrations, Select the Shopify Legacy app - click "View and Edit" on the right hand side. 

Scroll to the bottom of the pop-up page that comes up when you do this - at the bottom of this page, you should see your user ID and a clickable "Remove" /Remove this app button.

When clicked, it should pop up a window asking if you want to delete posts that Shopify legacy posted to your timeline. You can select it - I'd hope that would do the trick.  If not, I'm hoping that Shopify support and/or Facebook support can help you out, as I'm just another user!  

Good luck!  -Yani

Richard_James
Tourist
9 1 17

Hi Yani,

Thanks for this. The Shopify Legacy App has been removed in removed in Business Integrations back in 2019, unfortunately no luck in removing the associated data source in catalog manager.

Did it work for you?

Rich

Kayla_Davis
Tourist
3 0 5

We are having the same issue. I have spoken with both shopify and facebook and no one seems to have an answer or can figure out how to delete it. 

 

Riley-Carlson
Tourist
3 0 2

Any luck figuring out a solution?

Kayla_Davis
Tourist
3 0 5
Nothing unfortunately, shopify says it's a facebook issue, facebook says it
can't be removed.
Lost_Arrows
Tourist
10 0 20

Having the same issue. Tried deleting the feed from every page that let me delete it, but it keeps showing up. Tried deleting the products individually... They just repopulate...

Richard_James
Tourist
9 1 17

Hi Everyone, 

The latest information I have is that the Shopify legacy feed is shared from a Business Manager inside Facebook Ads Manager that is owned by Shopify. So FB helpdesk has said someone needs to go into the Shopify BM account and unshare the feeds to stop them populating our accounts.

I have a ticket open, so will let you know if I get it resolved. But it seems like the action is on Shopify to unshare the apps into our accounts to remove the dead feeds.

FB wont edit anything inside an account, not sure why it's built so you can't delete a feed in your own catalog manager, but short answer is the feeds originate from an app owned by a shopify business manager, and this is pushing these out of date feeds into our catalogs. 

Riley-Carlson
Tourist
3 0 2

Definitely let us know what comes from it. 

It’s really annoying that you are able to delete other feed sources except for the app portion despite having admin access to the catalog.... 

What would potentially happen if you deleted the catalog inside of Facebook and then set up the Facebook channel inside of Shopify again? Would it create a new catalog and then remove the Legacy sourcing? 

Tira
Shopify Staff (Retired)
1260 90 223

Hey, @Richard_James and everyone.

Tira here. I wanted to provide some insight on this.

In the Facebook Commerce Manager under the Catalog > data sources section, merchants will see a “Shopify legacy” data source under Apps that cannot be deleted.

This happens because the legacy sell on a Facebook Shop sales channel has synced products to Shopify from Facebook in a different way than the Facebook channel does. The “Shopify legacy” app under the data sources section is how the legacy channel synced products. 

I want to let you all know that the products in the “Shopify legacy” data source won’t appear to customers. If you would like to remove the data source, you can delete all items in that data source manually. Once all the items are removed, the data source will be removed. 

If after these items are deleted from the data source and the data source is still appearing, please contact Facebook support for help.

Cheers,

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

honeybug
Excursionist
33 0 8

Hi there!

Thanks for the reply. We have over 5K SKUS... do we really have to go manually through each and every one to delete this app? Is there any other work around? Thanks!

Tira
Shopify Staff (Retired)
1260 90 223

Hey, @honeybug.

Tira here, again. Thanks for your reply.

I searched for a way to perform a bulk delete of all items in a data source. I was unable to find more information and this would be outside our scope of support. I recommend connecting with Facebook’s help centre for assistance here

I’m also curious to see what the community has to suggest!

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

Lost_Arrows
Tourist
10 0 20

Tira thanks for looking into this. I've tried following the steps in the article you posted, and the items repopulate shortly after being deleted. It's like a never ending zombie horde of out of stock products. Most of the products aren't even in our Shopify inventory anymore, so who knows where it's pulling from. Unfortunately, my experience with this issue is customer-facing too. The attached photo is from our Instagram shop from my personal account. I've tried reaching out to Facebook directly. They don't make it easy to talk to a support agent... So I often run out of steam sifting through their help site just finding how to talk to a human.

IMG_8496.PNG

EHS_Design
Tourist
6 0 9

I'm another person stuck in the same boat. 

We have the "Shopify Legacy" app in our Facebook Commerce Manager and cannot remove it. We have 1,100 Variants, so manually deleting them all simply isn't an option - especially with some reports here that the products repopulate after they are deleted.

The old sales channel is removed from Shopify and the old Shopify Facebook app has been removed from the Facebook account, but the data feed persists.
Facebook tell me that the app cannot be removed by me as it is owned by another Facebook Business account (I assume that Shopify owns this account), and that only the other business account can remove the app from the data feed.

Contrary to what Shopify staff have stated in this thread, the old products ARE visible to our consumers. Being unable to purge these products from our catalogue is preventing us from running catalogue-based ads on Facebook.

I have opened a ticket with Shopify and was read back the answer already posted earlier in this thread, which doesn't work due to the fact the products ARE customer-facing, it's impractical to manually delete 1100 product variants, and there's a chance the deleted products may repopulate after deletion as other users have reported. The issue is being investigated further but as of yet is not resolved.

Simply deleting the entire Facebook product catalogue isn't a great option either, as our Instagram posts use this to tag any products we have posted, and re-tagging years worth of instagram posts is, again, impractical.

What needs to happen (at least, according to Facebook) is that whoever is in charge of the Facebook business account linked to the Shopify integrations, needs to access the account with control over the app, and remove the app from that end.

I'll keep everyone updated if and/or when a resolution is found. 

Richard_James
Tourist
9 1 17

This is an accepted solution.

Hi Everyone,

I've managed to remove the Legacy Data Feed by deleting my FB commerce account and creating a new commerce account. The outdated products have now gone. There are some risks associated with this so check before you do this. However, the situation is fixed for me now and the new commerce account was approved almost instantly so I had no down time for my ads or FB store. So I'm pretty happy with the result!

Risks:

  •  All your ads associated with the catalog will stop and you will need to duplicate and add the new catalog as you can't change a catalog once an ad is live
  • All your product tagged IG posts with products from your catalog will need to be retagged as tags will be deleted.
  • You will need to recreate any product sets you use for ads 

How I did this:

  • Go to : https://business.facebook.com/commerce_manager/
  • Click manage list in the screenshot below and delete the catalog associated with your commerce account. When deleted it should remove the commerce account too.
  • Go over to Shopify and run through the steps on the Facebook sales channel to set up a new commerce store. 

Richard_James_2-1618331518760.png

Let me know how you get on.

Lost_Arrows
Tourist
10 0 20

The nuclear option. Thanks Richard!

It sucks to lose all those IG tags, but better than ghost inventory with no solution on the horizon. Can confirm that it's a painless process following his steps. Easy to get resynced too.

Kayla_Davis
Tourist
3 0 5

Just did this as well and it worked out okay! Kind of a pain for this to be the only way around it, but its a solution.

Thanks Richard, and good luck everyone!

Tira
Shopify Staff (Retired)
1260 90 223

Hey, @Richard_James.

Tira here.

Thank you so much for sharing your findings and your solution with the community, this is awesome to see! I am also happy to see that your post was marked as a solution. 

Cheers,

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

EHS_Design
Tourist
6 0 9

Deleting the entire Commerce account is a very, very heavy handed approach. It works, but I would be reluctant to call it a "solution", especially given the collateral damage (Losing all product tags on all past Instagram posts, suspending all ads that use the product catalog, etc).

I got the same response from my support ticket that was posted on page 1 as a "solution", which was to manually delete every single product variant in the data feed. The solution recommends using check boxes which no longer exist, to bulk remove products. (Why Facebook removed those check boxes, I do not know.)

I have replied querying why the app cannot simply be unlinked from Shopify's end as per Facebook's advice, and am awaiting another response. 

Riley-Carlson
Tourist
3 0 2

Agreed, deleting the whole commerce account and setting it up again is an extreme "solution" there is absolutely no reason as having full access to the catalog you wouldn't be allowed to break the connection between the app and the catalog. I have tried going back through and deleting products from the source that it is able to do so (some accounts only have 18 product in it so its not bad. However, accounts with 3k+ it is not feasible to go through every product 1 by 1 to delete) and the product still repopulate. 

The app integration is under a different business manager (i assume the shopify business manager) and supposedly going through there is the only way to remove the app integration. Definitely don't want to risk deleting the commerce account to set it back up when there are many issues that may arise (commerce account falsely getting disapproved, losing out on spending, loss of data, etc.). 

EHS_Design
Tourist
6 0 9

Good news - It looks like Facebook have implemented an option to select all the items in your catalogue and delete them with a single click! (Although you will need to scroll to the bottom of your products list before clicking "Select all" if you actually wish to select everything.)

EHS_Design_0-1619143459339.png

It still seems a little buggy - as it refused to work at all on one computer, and when I tried it on another it gave me an error message (but seemed to delete the selected items anyway).
I'm still in touch with the Shopify support team so I'm letting them look at the items that haven't been correctly updated before I nuke the catalogue - especially as others here say it simply repopulates.

On a separate note - has anyone else here ended up with more than one product catalogue? We seem to have two, which is only adding to the confusion, and I'm unsure if this is the result of the Shopify sync or not.

Tira
Shopify Staff (Retired)
1260 90 223

Thanks for sharing this update, @EHS_Design. I can see that this would be helpful for the community. I am also glad to hear that you're working on this with our support team. I don't have access to the ticket that you're likely working on, but once there is an update from their end, they will be in touch with you with more details.

It looks like @Richard_James posted a screenshot earlier showing two product catalogs. Is this what you are referring to? If so, maybe they can help you with this.

Cheers,

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

EHS_Design
Tourist
6 0 9

Hi @Tira , 

The screenshot from @Richard_James at the start of this thread shows two data sources for a catalogue, however doesn't show if more than one catalogue exists.

I've heard back from the support team, and they have confirmed that Shopify is not pushing any of the data, so I'm proceeding with deleting all items in my Facebook products catalogues.

Support advises that any current products being synchronised from Shopify (Via the new Data Feed and not the old Shopify App) should repopulate in approximately 15 minutes. Facebook's deletion process appears to be a very slow one where a couple of thousand items are involved, so I'm still waiting on the results. If this fixes the problem, I'll write up a new post with a solution.

EHS_Design
Tourist
6 0 9

Success! I've finally managed to purge all the old products from the catalogue, without deleting the account or losing any tagged products on Instagram.
Here's what I did:

1. Go to Facebook Commerce Manager and select your catalogue. Under the Catalogue menu on the side bar, select items. Note the select all and delete buttons, but don't press these just yet.
screenshot.688.jpg

2. Scroll down to the bottom of your products. If you haven't scrolled all the way down, "Select All" will not select all products.
If you see a line at the bottom that looks like this, that means there are still more products loading: 
screenshot.691.jpg

3. Once you've reached the bottom of your products list, you can now click Select All, and then Delete. You should get a confirmation dialog box that looks like this: 
screenshot.689.jpg
Click "Delete Items" and Facebook Should remove all of the items from your catalogue.

3a. IMPORTANT NOTE: I had some issues with Facebook's delete button being very buggy. The confirmation dialog box would appear and then disappear not even half a second later - however if I was able to click "Delete All" before it disappeared again, it would still begin deleting products. This already seems to be fixed as of this morning, however I am noting it in case anyone else encounters the same issue.
I also found that Facebook only seemed to remove half of the items with a bulk delete. I had to repeat steps 2 and 3 several times in order to clear all of the products out, and I found waiting 5 minutes between tries and refreshing the page worked best. It gets really repetitive for the last few items but it does eventually work. Annoying, but hopefully this will also be fixed soon - if it is not already.

4. Contact Shopify Support and request a full re-synchronisation of all of your products to Facebook.
If you simply leave the catalogue, items will only repopulate after a change is made. (i.e. change in stock levels, update of description etc.) I do not know if there is a way to initiate this yourself as my support team member did not advise of any such way, they initiated the full resync on their end.

5. Success! Our full catalogue of 1500 SKUs is back and up to date, and to my surprise, old posts on Instagram still have the products tagged and showing up in our store! Here's a post from February:
Screenshot_20210429-115838.pngScreenshot_20210429-115846.png

Shopify support managed to confirm that the old app was not pushing any data, and that items should not repopulate. It has been 2 days so far and none of the old items have reappeared.

I hope this helps people looking for a less extreme measure than deleting their entire commerce account.