Importing product with metafield would be great if create a metaobject too

[Darius90]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on a project where I need to export products with metafields from one Shopify store and import them into another. The challenge I’m encountering is that while standard product data and metafields transfer over, metaobjects—specifically those used for taxonomy and structured data—do not.

Issue:
When we import products into the new store, Shopify does not automatically create or link the required metaobjects. This results in incomplete data for taxonomy-linked metaobjects or any custom structured data fields we’ve created, as these metaobjects are missing in the destination store.

Current Workflow:

1. Export products with metafields from the original store.
2. Import products into the new store.

Challenges:

• Metaobjects need to be manually created in the destination store to mirror the original setup.
• Linking these newly created metaobjects to the products in bulk is labor-intensive and error-prone.
• The unique metaobject IDs differ across stores, making direct re-linking impossible without additional manual steps or API intervention.

Proposed Solution:
It would be immensely helpful if @Shopify  could include metaobject creation during product import processes or provide a more streamlined approach to recreating and linking metaobjects in a new store environment.

I’m looking for advice on best practices for this process or if anyone has encountered a similar issue and found an effective workaround. Any guidance on using Shopify’s API or third-party tools to automate the re-creation and linking of metaobjects would also be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your insights!

[Finer]

@Darius90 Maxtrixify offers multiple import options, including menus and metaobjects:

https://matrixify.app/documentation/metaobjects/

In this case, it would still be necessary to ex- and import the metaobjects first. But at least it would not be necessary to do it manually. It also supports more metafield types than the shopify import.

[Darius90]

Yes, we use matrixify is, a great app. But it could be the default Shopify functionality. I just wanted to drag Shopify's attention

[Renars]

Hi @Darius90 and @Finer 

Thank you for mentioning the Matrixify app here and it is amazing to hear that you are already using it in your store!

You sure can export and import Metaobject entries using our app and thus migrate them over between your Shopify stores.

The only limitation here would be that you need to manually set up Metaobject definitions with the same fields, names, types, etc.

Same for Metafields, it is best to first set up definitions with the same namespace, key and type.

Once definitions are set up you can export Products with all details and in the same export include also Metaobjects with all details.

They do not need to be exported in separate exports.

When importing Products, if the Product has a metaobject reference metafield referencing Metaobject entry that does not exist in the store, then the app will remember it and import again at the end of the import job (you will see this as Generated Metafields sheet). 
This is developed specifically to ensure that if such Metaobject entry is created with a later sheet in the same import job, then the app can still link them.

For more details on copying data between Shopify stores, you can look into our tutorial - How to clone / duplicate a Shopify store.

And if you have any questions or concerns along the way, feel free to contact our support.