Hi.
Sometimes we need to quickly identify if any order (pending or not) has a certain product.
By product name it’s near impossible to do this because we have many products with similar names. It should be possible to do this by SKU.
Thank you
This is already supported in the current Orders search, although it is easy to miss.
In Shopify admin, go to Orders → All, then enter the structured search term:
sku:ABC123
Replace ABC123 with the exact SKU. Shopify’s current order-filter documentation confirms that Orders can be searched by SKU, and the Admin API exposes the same sku: filter:
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/fulfillment/managing-orders/viewing-orders/filtering-orders
Two caveats are worth checking if it returns nothing:
- the SKU must have existed on the line item when the order was created — adding or changing it later can make historical matching unreliable;
- SKUs should be unique, otherwise one search can return orders for multiple variants.
I would test it from the All orders view with one SKU from a known old order and one from a current order. If one works and the other does not, please say whether the SKU was changed after the older order; that would separate a historical-data limitation from an actual search regression.
Hi @pedro.it Welcome To Shopify Community So You can actually do this already using Shopify’s order search filters — no app needed.
Go to Orders, click into the search bar, and use:
sku:YOUR-SKU-HERE
This pulls up every order (any status — pending, unfulfilled, fulfilled, etc.) that contains a line item with that exact SKU. You can also combine it with other filters if needed, for example:
sku:YOUR-SKU-HERE status:open
One thing to watch out for: if a SKU has spaces or special characters, wrap it in quotes like sku:“YOUR SKU HERE” or the search may not match correctly.
If you’re dealing with a very high order volume and need this regularly (like a saved view or dashboard), that’s where a reporting app would help, but for quick manual checks the search filter above is the fastest way.Hope this helps solve your problem, and if it does, don’t forget to like and mark it as the solution. Thank you!
Guess it was the space after sku: and the actual sku.
Thank you
But shouldn’t it be an option in the other options that show in that search line?
@pedro.it Probably not, and theres a reason for it. The dropdown filters are all things that belong to the order itself, one status, one fulfilment state, one delivery method. SKU belongs to the line items inside the order, and one order can hold a dozen different SKUs, so it doesnt really fit that model. Thats my reading rather than something Shopify has stated, but it would explain why it stayed as a typed term.
The practical fix for not wanting to type it each time is to save it. Run your sku search, then save that filtered view as a tab along the top of the Orders page. It sits there permanently and you just click it. Handy if theres a particular product you keep chasing, like something on backorder or a batch you need to recall.
If you ever need to check a lot of SKUs at once rather than one at a time, export orders to CSV instead. That gives you a row per line item with the SKU on each, so you can filter the whole lot in a spreadsheet in one go.
@MayraApps it makes sense. and it’s not much trouble to write sku: everytime i need to search. it’s more that this information is not available easily.
And when I asked the sidekick it replied: “Unfortunately, the native Orders list in Shopify admin doesn’t support filtering by SKU directly — it only lets you search by order number, customer name, email, phone, or product title.”.
Exactly — there must be no space after sku:, so the working form is sku:ABC123. Your test confirms the native filter does work; the remaining problem is discoverability, and Sidekick’s answer was incorrect or out of date. Shopify’s order-search reference lists sku: as a valid filter, so I’d treat this as a documentation/Sidekick accuracy gap rather than a missing search capability. Glad the search itself is working now.
Thats worth flagging to Shopify, honestly. Sidekick told you a feature doesnt exist that you had already used successfully in the same session. Thats a worse problem than the one you started with, because most people would take that answer at face value and stop looking.
Its also the thing to bear in mind generally. Sidekick is confident whether or not its right, and it has no way of checking. When it tells you something isnt possible, thats worth verifying rather than treating as final. When it tells you something is possible, same. Its useful for pointing you at roughly the right area and unreliable on specifics.
On the discoverability point youre making, I think youre right and its a fair thing to leave the request open for. The search syntax exists and works, its just not surfaced anywhere you would naturally look. A hint in the search box listing what you can type would solve it without Shopify having to build anything.