HELP! duplicate products created when importing from supplier csv file

Store Design

Topic summary

Issue: Importing supplier CSVs creates duplicate products when “overwrite existing handle” is used. Supplier occasionally changes product handles, so Shopify treats them as new products even when SKUs match. In one import of ~8,000 items, ~2,500 duplicates were created; image imports also make the process very slow.

Key questions from OP:

  • How to find and bulk-delete duplicate SKUs?
  • Can updates target specific fields using SKU (not handle) as the key?
  • Can imports update products without re-importing images?
  • Preference to delete newly created duplicates, but those often contain the corrected data.

Another merchant confirms the pain: manual SKU checks for each import (e.g., 74 SKUs) take over an hour.

Latest update/solution offered: A third-party app, “Delete Duplicate Products,” can remove duplicate products/variants based on SKU, title, or barcode.

Status: Partial guidance only. No confirmed method in-thread for SKU-based partial updates or skipping image uploads during import; these remain open questions.

Summarized with AI on January 11. AI used: gpt-5.
1

I have a slight issue regarding product import. When I import from my suppliers .csv file and choose to overwrite existing handle, it decides to create duplicate products with the same SKU. (not on every product)

Eg, I just finished importing approx 8000 products which took almost 48 hours to do. Out of these 8000, It decided to duplicate approx 2500 of them and because I made changes in pricing it doesn’t look very professional on my website.

I have worked out that for some reason or another, my supplier changes the handle on some of their existing products so when I import their full .csv file, Shopify doesn’t recognise the handle so then creates a new product.

My reason for importing their full file is because they are forever making changes to the titles/descriptions because they have uploaded incorrect information, to begin with.

My questions are:

  1. is there any way of searching for duplicate SKU’s so that I can quickly get rid of them, rather than sifting through, page by page on Shopify backend
  2. is there any way of just updating the fields that I need to, but using SKU as the referer and not the handle
  3. Also is there any way of updating the products without having to import the images all the time as this is why it takes so long to import.

I would really appreciate any help.

P.S. I would prefer to delete the newly created ones mainly because of link history etc.. The only issue is there is that the new ones have the correct information as opposed to the old listings having possibly incorrect information.

IN SUMMARY to avoid this problem in the future

Is there a way of overwriting specific fields using the SKU as the reference, without overwriting the entire product?

TIA for any assistance..

2

Hi Marthena,

Did you come up with solution for this issue? This is a problem i’ve had right from the beginning and and am still do not have any way of dealing with it.

I imported an order yesterday of 74 sku’s. I set up the csv and then copied and pasted the sku’s one by one to check if the item already exists and if the price has changed. This took over an hour!!!

If you do have any suggestions that would have a massive effect on reducing my time.

All the best
Will

3

Hi @Marthena_Smith

I see this is an old post, but I want to leave an answer for the people who search and land on this page.

You can use the Delete Duplicate Products app to eliminate duplicate products and variants on your store based on SKU, title, or barcode.