How to update product prices without deleting images in bulk editing?

Shopify Discussion
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Thank you, Helen. So, using the built in bulk editor is time consuming. Moreover, I’m finding that my biggest issue currently is figuring out how to update prices on entire brands, as they issue annual price increases, or for otherwise need be.

I tried to do this for one entire brand the other day, and I ran into the issue that I had to have all the product photos in the csv even, just to update the prices. This seemed really strange to me, but Shopify Plus said it was necessary, so I took the Product export for all the products with this particular Vendor listing, and I worked that product export via Excel to update all the prices, and then re-imported the same Excel spreadsheet back into Shopify… and it erased all non-primary product images. So, any photo that was a second, third, and so on photo for a product. They were contained in the product re-import, the same as the output from Shopify, I hadn’t touched those lines containing the non-primary photos.

Ideally, I could load in and update via csv new product information without having to re-write over all old information. I thought this should be possible, as when importing there is the question (check box): “Overwrite any current products that have the same handle. Existing values will be used for any missing columns.” It thus came as a surprise to me that I should need to re-upload photos just to update prices.

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Hi again, @LisaD . Thanks for bringing up this concern. I actually moved your question from the previous thread to start a new topic, as I suspect some other merchants may also encounter this issue. This way, it’ll be easier for us all to find to continue the discussion.

So, your workflow was correct! The best way to update product prices using the CSV is to first export it, make your adjustments, then import it back into your store choosing the ‘overwrite’ option. This helps eliminate the possibility of any formatting errors, which can be very frustrating to troubleshoot!

However, your images being deleted upon importing the CSV back into your store is not expected behaviour. We’ve found that this commonly happens though when the columns and rows in the CSV are sorted, in order to make editing easier. Additional variants and/or product images are housed on separate rows, and so these additional rows can get broken up when things are sorted. Since the CSV importer goes through the file row-by-row, your store then ends up with fragmented products.

So, for example, did you happen to sort your Vendor and/or Price column to more easily find and edit the prices of your one particular vendor? This would most likely then result in the image column no longer being in the same order as each product or variant, and thus resulting in some of the images missing when importing the partially re-sorted CSV back into your store. Does that make sense?

The good news is, the easiest way to recover from this kind of situation is to import the original CSV file that hasn’t been sorted. This will bring back all of your images. Then, knowing what you know now about sorting the columns, you can edit your CSV again (without sorting), and import the changes into your store. Do you still have the original CSV?

If you don’t, and the images are completely gone from your ‘Settings > Files’ section as well, let me know! Shopify doesn’t store data, and so generally once a merchant’s store data has been deleted, it cannot be restored. However there are certain situations where there is a chance that it (or some of it) can be recovered, and so I’d be happy to look into it for you if required.

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I am currently having the same problem. Nothing has been sorted, no columns deleted or moved. I have reuploaded the original export, and still my product photos other than the main image are gone. Can someone please help?

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Hi! I resolved this with support. Even when you upload the original file sometimes that doesn’t fix all the images, but in my case it did fix some so first i would recommend you upload the original untouched file. We found that for the remaining missing images the problem was that the image urls were broken. To fix this you would need to get the link from your original csv file from the ‘Image Src’ column (note: I would recommend that you do all edits on Google Sheets since different versions of Excel or Numbers might break the document).

Once you have the link you need to add “/deleted” before /products/ and that will load the image. then add the new image url to the csv or add each photo manually to each product on Shopify.

Example:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0121/5859/9268/products/casco-orbea-r10-mips-800x800_iKWNGsn.jpg?v=1616111708

Change to:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0121/5859/9268**/deleted/**products/casco-orbea-r10-mips-800x800_iKWNGsn.jpg?v=1616111708

This will only work if the original image link is broken.

Hope it helps!

6 Likes
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Thank you so much for this solution, it works!!!

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lifesaver- was about to go insane. thank you soo much!

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Hi Helen, I’ve had a problem where an import deleted all my variant images. I can see the deleted_assets file in settings > files but no way to re upload. There’s over 2,000 images deleted. Please help.

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Hello Helen,

I came across your response in an effort to find a solution to the issue your talking about. Just last night for some reason our same CSV was uploaded with new data, however some of our product photos are gone. Mostly the AR columns lost data/links (perhaps it was sorted as you mentioned), however we really need to get this store up and going ASAP. And as of now it looks like the fastest way is manually, which will take a long time. That said – are you able to assist – perhaps because this just happen there is a copy still on the server? Please help if you can or recommend an efficient way to reload in bulk. Thank you kindly.

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This answer is incorrect I’m afraid.

I want to bulk update prices and stock levels. I use overwrite. Images disappear. I have never changed the order of the ccolumns.

To fix it, I have to reimport again using overwrite and also change \products\ to \deleted\products\

So there appears to be no way to import and bulk update prices and stock levels without deleting all your images.

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What if we don’t have the “/products/” in the image url?
Doesn’t this become cumbersome if we’re doing multiple exports and imports to edit data? This is just silly of Shopify.

Does anyone know of an app that will help restore all these images?? HElp!

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Were you able to find a solution? My image URLs don’t even have /product/ either…D: