Variant option error

[Loúdi]

Hi, everytime i add an product and go to Variants and change the sizes (for example i change size M to XS because i want to convert asian sizes to EU). First couple products worked fine but now i get an error everytime i try to change the sizes and it says "Option value already exists" How do i fix this? please help me im stuck...

[Loúdi · Accepted solution]

I already fixed it, somehow you have to change it 1 by 1 and not all at the same time...

[Liam]

Hi Loúdi,

Glad you figured this out and thanks for returning to post your solution!

[Saintly]

Half the time this error shows up when I had multiple variants and half the time it doesn't. It's very frustrating as I'd like it to just not be there in the first place. I've been adding multiple variants for the last few months and each upgrade Shopify does messes things up. Finally got the SKU back into the More Actions and all my skus are different... but still "Option value already exists." Very frustrating. I feel if this is going to pop up it should be required to identify exactly what is wrong and needs to be fixed.  A red dot or something to help us find it. Entering variants in or making changes 1 by 1 is far too tedious and time consuming when one has hundreds of products in your shop. This program should be about saving us time and not making more work.

[TimFreet]

Why not say what the Option is that is causing the error - this is basic error feedback, which 'option' already exists. Even better red highlight the fields in the form causing the issue.

[Saintly]

Exactly! Direction would be wonderful. 

[akspencer]

"Solved." 
Not.

I was getting the "Option value already exists" error when trying to add "Unframed" as a variant to a product that already had framed options. So trying to figure out what "change it 1 by 1" is supposed to mean, I started over by adding just the Variant and saving. When I did that it gave me the error: "Cannot make changes because at least one product variant is missing a required SKU." Ooookay. So I entered SKUs for each variant. Then I get "Option value already exists." 

Now I'm stuck in an infinte loop of frustration and wondering why I decided to try Shopify and not stick with Woocommerce. 

[Aqdasansari21]

same here

how to solve it 

[Aqdasansari21]

[akspencer]

Here's the soultion I've found. It's clumsy but seems to work.
1. Add the Variant
2. Click "Save"
3. An error message will show up. Ignore it and ...
4. Reload the page. 
5. Each variant will now have SKUs that, apparently, the system automatically assigns. Or at least some of the variants will now have SKUs. I noticed it sometimes take muliple reloads for them all to populate. But if you have your own SKUs you can skip additional reloads and ...

6. Click on an individual product/variant. This will open a page that lists all the variants. From here you can add you own SKU's for each variant if needed, one at a time. Once you're done ... 

7. Click the back button and return to the product page. Click Save. It should now save without an error message. 

If you just want to use the SKUs that Shopify's system (apparently) populates on its own, you may try skipping steps 6 and just reloading a few times, then once they all have SKUs, hitting "Save." I haven't tried that approach myself.