why did my product listings duplicate all of a sudden?

[SueAlpacaTexas]

I had been doing bulk editing (copy & paste) to change my unit of measure on all my products from lb to oz.

When I finished and clicked on "Products" all of a sudden there are 2 of almost every product name on the list! Also duplicated was all the information about each product, quantity, etc. I am using Dawn theme.

Any ideas on why this is happening?

When I export the list, the duplicate product that was created for each one has a "-1" after the handle name.

[TheUntechnickle]

Hey @SueAlpacaTexas,

This is actually a really common issue that happens when doing bulk edits in Shopify, so don't stress about it. What happened is that during your copy/paste bulk editing session, Shopify accidentally created duplicate products instead of just updating the existing ones. The system automatically adds "-1" to the handle (URL identifier) of duplicate products to keep the URLs unique.

This isn't related to your Dawn theme at all - it's just how Shopify's bulk editor sometimes behaves when there are conflicts during the editing process. When you export your product list and see those "-1" handles, those are the duplicate products that were created accidentally.

The easiest way to fix this depends on how many products you're dealing with. If it's just a handful, you can go into your Products section and manually delete the ones with "-1" in their handles, keeping the original products. For larger numbers, you can use Shopify's bulk editor to filter products where the handle "ends with" "-1" and then bulk delete all the filtered results.

If you have tons of duplicates, there are apps like "CS - Delete Duplicate Products" that can automatically find duplicates by title, SKU, or barcode and bulk delete them with rules like keeping the oldest or newest version. Another option is the "Bulk Product Editor" app by Ablestar, which has a built-in "Has duplicate title" filter specifically for finding and removing duplicates.

For future bulk edits, especially when changing units of measure, it's usually safer to export your products to CSV, make the changes in Excel or Google Sheets, and then import them back. This gives you more control and you can see exactly what's happening. If you go the CSV route to clean up what you have now, sort your exported file by product title first, then by handle - this will group duplicates together with the original product appearing first and the "-1" version right after it, making it easy to delete the duplicate rows.

The key thing is that this is totally fixable and pretty routine - lots of Shopify store owners run into this when doing bulk operations. Once you clean up the duplicates, everything will be back to normal and your unit changes should be properly applied to your original products.

Cheers!
Shubham | Untechnickle

[SueAlpacaTexas · Accepted solution]

Yay !! Thank you! I thought I was the Lone Ranger out here since I couldn't find the question in the community.

I appreciate your help!!! Thankfully, I have a few hairs left from pulling them out with this challenge ! LOL

[karen1pdfk]

We're having the same problem. 
I noticed this after Shopify had updated / moved a toolbar. 
BUT we were not doing any bulk editing. 

[SueAlpacaTexas]

I think I reacted too soon. I exported, then deleted all duplicates in Excel. I then imported the updated file.

At first, no duplicates appeared in my product listing. Then when I clicked on the "Products" with the little arrow to the right of it, duplicates appeared in my product listing. See attached. Any help would be appreciated. 

[KarenFaulkner]

We're having the same issue but we have not done any bulk editing.