Can we archive variants without deleting them?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Shopify currently does not support archiving individual product variants—only entire products can be archived. This limitation frustrates merchants who need to retain discontinued or temporarily unavailable variants for reporting and accounting purposes without displaying them to customers.

Current Workarounds:

  • Set variant inventory to zero, making it show as unavailable (requires custom coding to hide from storefront)
  • Clone the product, delete unwanted variants from each version, then archive the clone (cumbersome process)
  • Use third-party apps like “Drodi: Hide SoldOut Products” (requires paid subscription and setup fees)

Community Concerns:

  • Deleting variants removes purchase history needed for tax/accounting compliance
  • Out-of-stock variants clutter product pages and appear unprofessional
  • Manufacturers frequently change product specifications, creating outdated variant listings
  • The issue has persisted for years with thousands of merchants seeking this feature

Status: The discussion remains unresolved with no official Shopify response. Multiple users suggest submitting formal feature requests through Shopify support rather than relying on forum visibility.

Summarized with AI on November 1. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Can you archive a variant? We do not want to delete the variants for reporting purposes, but specific variants are no longer available.

11 Likes
2

Do you want to hide it on the storefront instead of showing that variant as out of stock?

3

Hi @LLCAMP ,
No, you can’t disable or archive specific variants, this can only be done on the whole product.
What you can do with variants is zero them out, in that case customers will see it as unavailable. If you don’t want to display them on your storefront you could try to filter variants which has 0 qty on our PDP page (coding required). Such approach isn’t used very commonly, but if you want to hide unavailable variants so your customers can’t see them, such approach should work.

4

That’s unfortunate, but super helpful. Thank you!

5

@Shopify_77 this is a pretty basic thing and could be coded in. Variants often end up getting changed by manufacturers and now we have a website full out outdated info. Enable us to archive variants please!

14 Likes
6

Agreed!! I’ve been wanting this capability for years, especially with the excruciating supply issues in apparel etc. @Shopify_77 please add this to your next smattering of updates for Admin!

6 Likes
7

Hoping Shopify sees this again. So frustrating to have things showing as out of stock just so we can keep proper accounting reports available (as required by the government).

5 Likes
8

Bumping this up. Vendors change products all the time and our product offering is getting pretty messy. Makes us not want to use variants, but then we have a crazy number of eaches of products!

3 Likes
9

Bumping this - this is such an easy implementation for Shopify and would be extremely helpful.

3 Likes
10

I’m baffled this isn’t a thing.

5 Likes
11

Bumping this discussion because I need this like the 7,000+ people who landed on the page from a Google search.

8 Likes
12

Bump! I hate the idea of deleting a variant just because things temporarily change.

8 Likes
13

Yes this is a must!

14

Also very much need this feature. The lack of a way to archive variants makes the product list harder to navigate. We can’t just delete the variants for reporting purposes, as others have mentioned. Big oversight IMO, chill out on the big new features for a second and fix this please!

1 Like
15

I want this feature as well. I don’t think Shopify developers are looking here for feature requests. It seems like everybody should be submitting feature requests with support.

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16

Jan 23, 2025 hoping the mods don’t delete my reply or the thread (it’s getting policed pretty hard lately with disappearing replies and posts). Requesting again that this is revisited. Our website is littered with out of stock variants or discontinued variants and it is so messy and unprofessional looking. We want to keep our purchase history so we can’t delete it. Please help!

2 Likes
17

There is a very cumbersome workaround to archive variants. Here’s how:

  1. Clone the matrix with the variant(s) you want to archive.
  2. in the new matrix clone delete any variants you want to keep online. Make sure all variants you want to archive remain (this keeps copies of the sales history).
  3. In the original matrix delete the variants that you want to archive.
  4. Archive the new matrix clone to remove the variants from your site.
18

I have been wanting this to be integrated into Shopify for years. I have been using a paid app to hide sold out products and variants, but I’m also fed up with having to use apps for every little thing. I’m using Drodi: Hide SoldOut Products, and it works well enough. I had to pay an outrageous set-up fee to use the hide variant feature, but it works and helps keep the product pages looking cleaner.

1 Like