There are 3 features that would greatly help store owners manage collections.
The ability to export/import collections to work on them in a spreadsheet.
The ability to move from collection to collection with a next button within the admin collection page.
That the “Last Update” date only refers to work admin has done on them, NOT when they were last crawled or whatever else caused that date/time to change. Example, I am overhauling over 400 collections and sorting by last updated is useless when a 50 of them say they were edited at 3:00am. I open to discover I have not edited them yet.
Curious about your workflow for (1). when you say “work on them in a spreadsheet,” what specifically are you doing there? Bulk-editing titles/descriptions, reordering products, tagging, something else? Trying to understand the actual pain point. Also you might already know it, but a very good app for that is Matrixify.
For (2) that’s 100% a Shopify platform feature request, not something an app could fix. Though curious: would “next” make sense to you in alphabetical order, last update order, or just the order you were browsing in the collection list?
I am not familiar with matrixify. I will take a look. I did try an app last year for collections but it didn’t do what I needed.
I am bulk editing descriptions as well as filling in some additional metafields [similar collections at the bottom of the page, and a 2nd rich text field for more information below the products.] So each one is taking me a good 5 to 10 minutes at least. Little shortcuts would be extremely beneficial.
Sorting by last edited wasn’t helpful because of the irrelevant dates in the “Updated” column.
A-z would have worked except I didn’t realize there was the updated date issue and I started with the oldest one and got 100+ done before I discovered the issue. See screenshot - no one was working on the site at that time (confirmed by the old data still in the descriptions)
Apps like Matrixify already let you import and export collections on the spreadsheet.
No native options, would need a feature request.
Valid pain point, worth flagging directly.
Hello @TMPDAN
Those are great recomendations, particularly for those stores with big catalogs. With the export and import procedure, some merchants use matrix or bulk editing apps to edit collection data outside the admin more effectively. In terms of moving from collection to collection, if you are looking at big batches saved filtered views inside of the Collections area can reduce your clicks. And I also agree that if real admin edits and system updates (automated) in the Last Updated field could be separated that would make keeping tabs on collection work a lot more practical.
I agree these would all be valuable additions, especially the ability to export/import collections and having version history.
For stores with a large catalog, even a small mistake when editing collections can take a long time to fix. Being able to restore a previous version or compare changes would make collection management much safer and more efficient.
Until Shopify introduces these features, some merchants use third-party tools to keep historical copies of important store data as an extra safeguard against accidental changes. It isn’t a replacement for native collection versioning, but it can help recover from unexpected edits.
Hopefully the Shopify team considers adding these capabilities, as they’d benefit many growing stores.
