Uploading CSV with multiple handle duplicates but different products.

[RyanColbear]

Hi I was wondering if somebody could clarify something for me. 

We are looking to import products using a CSV file however many of our items have the same title yet are different products. We are a clothing store and each piece is individual, for example "Adidas T Shirt Red Size Small" could be the title for many different individual items. We use the photos and SKU to differentiate the items. My question is would Shopify recognise the difference in SKU's or would it think that all "Adidas T Shirt Red Size Small" were the same product?

Thanks a lot,

Ryan.

[Jayvin]

Hi,

That's interesting question. From what I have read here, check it out.

It seems like shopify add unique products by handle else there is some override mechanism. So I think you will need to create different handles for products with same title.

[productsync]

Hey Ryan

If you use the same handle for different products in your csv then what happens is the previous items gets overwritten with new product data from same handle so say you had 4 rows with same handle the last one would end up being the only one that is left in your product list.

If your SKU's are unique then this would work however remember that the handle is used in your SEO product URL so may not be the best. You could try a combination of name and SKU. You can achieve this by concat function in excel.

Regards

Tom

[KieranR]

Yeah for the purpose of importing products the handle sortof acts as the identifying field. There's no restriction on duplicate titles or SKUs.

In Shopify Admin, each product has a Product ID number, which is set by Shopify and not editable.

That is really what Shopify is using on the back to differentiate products. 

[productsync]

Hi

Just to clarify what I meant:

"If your SKU's are unique then this would work however remember that the handle is used in your SEO product URL so may not be the best. You could try a combination of name and SKU. You can achieve this by concat function in excel."

You could use SKU or a mixture of SKU and Name as your Handle so you have a unique value. 

Regards

Tom

[RyanColbear]

Morning Tom, 

Thanks a lot for the response and clarification!

Based on the information you've given, if i use the Concat function to add the SKU to the end of the title for each individual item it should eliminate any duplicates? The problem i think we will have is when re importing the CSV it will create duplicates on the site as all of the original listings will stay on the site with their original handles, there will just be 1 with the SKU in the handle and 1 without. Or when importing to shopify does it remove all items from the site that are not on the current CSV being imported?

Sorry for all of the questions and hopefully they make sense!

Cheers

[Andrew]

Hi @RyanColbear 

Hyde here from Shopify. Great question!

To import products into Shopify you would need to use Shopify's CSV format. Each product is differentiated by being on a new line in the CSV and by the column headers outlined in this document. The document also includes explainers of each CSV column header that includes whether they are required or not:

Here is a downloadable template product CSV file you work off of to help you! The sample file contains an example product and a couple of variants. Your import file likely contains many more products and variants. If you use the sample file to create your own import file, then make sure that you remove all the example products.

I hope that helps!

All the best, Hyde.

[RyanColbear]

Good morning all above,  

Thank you very much for your response!

The scenario we have is that one of the team accidentally deleted a large chunk of our shop inventory - around 1000 as an estimate. As previously mentioned each of our items are individual unique items and we have around 12,000 items on our store and add around 500+ each day. 

We managed to download the CSV file pretty quickly once the accidental delete had happened, and now want to use it to re import the items that we have lost. What we want to avoid is creating multiple products, firstly from all of the items that are on both the CSV and still on the site and secondly because a large number of our items are likely to have the same product title. Also now that it has been 24 hours since downloading the CSV will all of the items that have sold in that time be re added if we try to re import? 

Apologies for all of the questions and long winded explanation, it's a bit of a complicated one! I'm pretty sure that we are just going to have to accept that the deleted items are now lost and there is no way of rectifying this but hopefully there is a solution. 

[Andrew]

Shopify really ultimately uses the product handle as a means of identifying individual products. So if you've been attributing each product a unique handle, then you can simply import the ones you want by following these steps below (more here😞

Of course, if you haven't been using unique handles for your products you will want to avoid doing this or you risk overriding the products with the same attributes. What's more, if you upload a CSV with variant quantities included then that may override the inventory amounts after any sales during that 24 hour period.

I hope this helps! Hyde. 

[productsync]

Hey Ryan

I get the issue you have now. Goal is to merge the csv and what you already have on Shopify and avoid duplication as its hard to work out what is there and what has been deleted. Does your csv have the handles when you exported? You could run another export now and merge the 2 files together. Then replace everything.

We may be able to help you through our platform. You could import all your existing Shopify products and I can get one of my guys to import the csv file and see if we can avoid duplication. Probably would be good to study the csv file first to see what is possible. No cost to you for us to have a go - I like a challenge! If you get nowhere with first suggestion send me an email to tom@channelup.io with the file.

Regards

Tom