Dear Shopify

[danny27404]

Please can you have a update feature on products where we can just upload a csv and only update the column matching the handle. I have 7,500+ products and to re upload the csv takes over 6 hours to update products. The amount your charging us to use your service this simple feature should be accessible to all not to a app that charges monthly to use.

[Ablestar_Daniel]

Hi @danny27404,

I can't speak for Shopify but one thing that might help speed up the updates is removing the columns that you're not making changes to (especially any image columns). If you're updating a product attribute the only column you need is the Handle and then the columns you want to update.

For example, the following spreadsheet will update the Title and Vendor for the matching product if you import it in the Shopify admin with the "Overwrite products with matching handles" option selected:

To update variant fields you'll need the following columns at a minimum to match the correct variant: Handle, Title, Option1 Value, Option2 Value, Option3 Value, Variant Price

Removing the extra columns will reduce the chance of errors (since there's no way to see what was changed after the fact) and speed up the process. At a minimum I'd suggest removing the images columns if you're updating your data with a spreadsheet, since those take longer to process, and also testing any changes like this with 1-2 products first

Best,

Daniel

[danny27404]

This does not work its a complete pain however I found a workaround using the api to upload. If i wasnt including images it was just firing it back saying no images. 

Im just catching up, in the end i got used to the api and use that for everything now, faster and more reliable for large catalogues. 

What sparked this was the product handle was changed for every product by a seo program which when i ran the automated stock updater completely broke it. My only thing I wish shopify could impliment is a handle lock seen as we can use meta data anyway it stops apps from effectively breaking a whole shop that relies on stock automation. It cost my client 1 week of downtime because they never backed up their store. And thought total seo was what they needed (This was not a managed store) plus side was cash from me and now its a managed store.