Changing prices via CSV and keeping Custom Collections

[DP_2023]

Hi there.

So I know how to export product to a csv and change pricing, but how do I reimport this pricing back into Shopify without losing my custom collections?

Thanks in advance!

Nate

[Niki_K]

Hi @DP_2023 ,

I’d like to help you but would need some more information. I don’t entirely understand what do you mean by “custom collections”. Could you please elaborate more on this?

Thanks!

[DP_2023]

Hi Niki!

Our store sells a lot of drum related product, so all the product have been organized into what I call “custom collections” such as Drumsticks, Cymbals, Drum Kits etc. We also have a lot of suppliers, and at the moment it seems we’re getting price rises every 6 months. Because we have about 3000 product items online, it’s easier to update prices via a spreadsheet in bulk and upload them, but I noticed when I tested this initially that I lost my custom collections, so had to repopulate them with product. I really don’t want to have to do this (once was enough!) as it takes about a week to put everything where it needs to be, and then reupload all the product images.

I’m sure there’s a way of doing it though, but I don’t know how to.

I really appreciate your help.

Nate

[Niki_K]

Hi Nate ( @DP_2023 ),

this behavior is quite weird. What collections are you using? Manual or automated? Does it happen for both of these collection types?

Are you updating only the price column? No more changes? When importing the products back to Shopify, do you check off the “Overwrite any current products that have…”?

[DP_2023]

There could be a good chance that I did the overwrite thing because we need to overwrite pricing. With the current website we have we upload via spreadsheet and overwrite everything, but don’t map the images column (so that we don’t lose our images). Our current site will not let us upload only 2 columns (say SKU and RRP), we need to upload every column.

Would I be right in assuming theat with Shopify I could just upload a spreadsheet consisting of solely a SKU and new RRP/Sale price?

I use manual collections just because I feel like it would be easier and more accurate than doing automated.

Nate

[Niki_K]

Hi @DP_2023 ,

as far as I know, when uploading CSV file the only required columns are Handle and Title, then you can add some more columns such as SKU, new sale price etc.

However, bear in mind how the data might be overwritten when you leave some column values blank (in many cases when you leave the values blank, they upload as “blank” t, etc. Please refer to the Shopify manual about CSV import and export, in which you can find more information about specific scenarios and limitations.

In the manual, there is also a section about adding the “collection” column, which isn’t exported by default. You need to add the column manually. However, this comes with some limitations, e.g. you can assign a product to only one collection

Anyway, it’s quite hard for me to say now where the problem is since I don’t have access to the data and don’t see the entire process of exporting/importing the data.

One side note: Automated collection – from my experience, I think that automated collection save lots of time. You can use quite a lot of different product conditions to automatically include matching products in a collection (from product titles, product tags, variant’s title). Besides this, with the Winter editions news, now it’s possible to create automated collection with metafields.

For sure, I don’t know your store and don’t know all factors why the manual collections are better for your store, but still would consider this.

Hope this helps!

[DP_2023]

Thank you!

I’ll keep you posted how it turns out

Nate

[DP_2023]

Hi Niki,

I did a little test with just a few items using only handle, title and new price, and everything seemed to work fine, so thank you!

Nate

[Niki_K]

Hi @DP_2023 (Nate),

great! Happy to hear that!