Invalid Product Category message upon CSV import

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A user is receiving an “invalid product category” error message when importing products via CSV, despite using Shopify’s official product taxonomy from their GitHub repository.

Key Details:

  • The import completes successfully despite the red banner warning
  • Both full category paths (e.g., “Health & Beauty > Personal Care > Cosmetics > Perfumes & Colognes”) and shortened versions (e.g., “Perfumes & Colognes”) are parsed correctly
  • Categories are sourced from Shopify’s official Italian taxonomy file

Current Status:

  • The user seeks clarification on whether this warning indicates an actual issue or system glitch
  • No responses or solutions have been provided yet
  • A screenshot of the error message is included for reference
Summarized with AI on November 2. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi everyone,

I’m not here to report an issue but a message returned by the system about invalid product categories in my CSV-based imports.

I am using the official product categories that Shopify is asking us to use. I am referring to the taxonomy publicly available on GitHub: product-taxonomy/dist/it/categories.txt at main · Shopify/product-taxonomy · GitHub

Even though I get the alert, the import is successful. Also, it seems the system doesn’t care if I use the whole namespace of the product category (i.e.: Health & Beauty > Personal Care > Cosmetics > Perfumes & Colognes) or just the last part of the namespace (i.e.: Perfumes & Colognes), the category is being parsed correctly.

However, the fact that the system alerts me about the product category with a red banner still bugs me a little and I just wanted to clear any possible glitch or concern I should be aware of.

Thanks for your support.

I’m attaching here a screenshot:

2025-01-20_16h54_04.jpg
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