Hello wonderful community,
I’m facing a significant issue and would appreciate your help. I run a shop specializing in collectibles and have set up our website through Shopify for its user-friendliness. We work with several distributors, but one in particular is a major supplier for us. To streamline inventory management, I imported a CSV file from this distributor directly into Shopify.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that all the imported items were set to be active by default. As a result, none of these items are visible in our product listings, but they can still be found through the search bar. Since I haven’t set any pricing or descriptions yet, they’re showing up with a $0.00 price.
With over 10,000 items, I’m struggling to manage this since it seems Shopify only allows deletion in batches of 50 at a time. I’d greatly appreciate any advice or solutions to resolve this issue more efficiently.
Thank you in advance for your assistance!
Hi @PopeManJim 
Reimport the items with the Published column set to false.
Or tag the products for easier management in finding, publishing or deleting.
l the imported items were set to be active by default. As a result, none of these items are visible in our product listings, but they can still be found through the search bar
That doesn’t sound right , if listings are active they should be available to any channels they are published on not just the storefronts search for the online-sales channel. That should only happen if a search app is involved that ignores the published status or you have a custom storefront situation.
Unless by “search” you mean google-shopping et al which are vastly different things.
ALWAYS backup ALL product data before going on a bulk deletion or automated deletion journey.
For automation to unpublish products use a tool like shopify-flow or, mechanic
For automation to delete products use a tool like mechanic
https://tasks.mechanic.dev/?q=delete%20product
If you need custom automations, or consulting for more productive and efficient ETL workflows on shopify then contact me by my email for services.
Contact info in forum signature.
ALWAYS please provide context, examples: store url, theme name, post url(s) , or any further detail in ALL correspondence.
Good Luck.