How to import and export products in WooCommerce

Hosting Mautic QuickStart -50% with support in Spanish
24 hours and free training

Send up to 1,000,000 emails/year. Mautic support in Spanish 24 hours, 365 days

As I have already mentioned in other articles, the beginning of any project is always incredibly magical.

If you have an idea for an online store in your mind, and you want to translate it into a website to be able to sell products or services…great! you are in a kind of project very motivating.

If, on the other hand, and as usually happens with the vast majority of my clients, you already have an online store with WooCommerce (and you want to completely redo it) or you are using other type of service such as Shopify, and you want to “move” to WooCommerce (which, by the way, if you are in the middle of this process, I recommend that you look for a hosting wherever it is), keep reading because this article interests you.

What I am going to show you is the procedure to follow (I am not making it up myself, in fact, I am basing it on the ) to import products correctly (and in my opinion in a quite traditional way) to WooCommerce (or to export them).

Everything will focus on a template file that you can work with Google Sheets, or with the Excel of a lifetime, so that later your life is easier when creating all the products at the same time.

That yes, I already warned you that the content of this article is of a level pre-advancedsince we will handle somewhat technical concepts.

But don’t be scared and don’t let that drop of cold sweat that is breaking out on your forehead right now continue running down your face, because by the end of this article, you will know exactly what steps to follow, and how to do everything.

So we start by explaining the essential element that we are going to deal with in this process of importing / exporting WooCommerce products.

CSV Template

If you have or want to have less than 50 products, you may be interested in doing the process manually, to save you headaches.

But if you have more than 50 products, what I recommend is to get used to using this somewhat traditional system of creating products or updating them through a CSV file.

WooCommerce puts at your disposal a CSV file as a template (you can ).

When you open it (we’ll see it in the video below if you don’t feel like opening it now), you’ll see many columns with different names for each one.

This file is the one we are going to work with during this article.

I am going to limit myself to explaining what each column is for and the way in which you have to import it to your recently created website with a “blank” WooCommerce.

We are now going to fully attack the CSV file, of which you are going to have to become super friends, because it will be your best ally in the face of create or update products massively in your online store with WooCommerce.

Creating the blank CSV

The concept itself is basic: you need a CSV file full of information about all your products, and this information has to be arranged correctly in the different columns provided by the sample CSV file.

What can be done in this regard, to ensure that this information is available as required by a CSV file of this type, is:

You can export existing products in your online store to a file Generic CSVand then do a kind of mix adapting it the one provided by WooCommerce.
You may directly fill (calmly and patiently) each column of the file we are commenting on.
You may use your own CSVwhich you will then have to adapt to the one that WooCommerce recommends.

Remember that you follow the path you follow, this you will have to do just one time in massive mode, and then you will simply limit yourself to updating said CSV file and uploading it to your website as many times as necessary, to update products in a massive way.

I believe that the effort is well worth it, since then it will save you an impressive amount of time.

If you don’t see it for yourself, please take 2 minutes to visualize the two possible scenarios:

Scenario 1 (the one that almost everyone does): You spend a whole morning uploading 200 products to your WooCommerce website, one by one, with the WooCommerce editor inside your own website; From now on, when you want to change them, you will search for the specific product, enter its file and change the information (and so on with each and every one that you need to update).
scenario 2 (the one I propose): You invest the same morning in creating a CSV with all the information of your 200 products. You upload it to your WooCommerce website and publish it; From now on, when you want to change something, you do it in the CSV file and upload it again, so that everything is massively updated.

I don’t know about you, but if I had a website with 200, 300 or 1000 products, it makes more sense to take the overall control offered by the use of the CSV method.

Guidelines or recommendations to follow

Once you have understood all the parts that the import CSV file contains, as well as the reason why it is advisable to use it, here are the official guidelines to follow so that later you do not lose your hair or want to scream out the window when import the products for the first time to your WooCommerce online store.

Use the UTF-8 format (this is something you don’t have to know, it’s very technical. Most files of this type are UTF-8).
The dates they have to coincide with the time slot of your online store (it seems not, but this is usually a mistake that many make).
Use a “1” when it is Yes, and a “0” when it is No. (This is basic programming, and very easy to understand.)
separate by one “,” (eat) different values (for example for the attributes of your products).
When you write the SKUs (the ID of your product) simply write the number, it is not necessary to specify what the ID or SKU is. (For example: 398RTS and not ID:398RTS).
The taxonomies they are also separated by “,” (commas).
Products that are in draft will not be exported (only those that are published, or products marked as privately published, do it).
The images of the products are neither imported nor exported (only their URLs or links). You will have to, previously or later, upload them to the destination server of your website.
are also supported external URLs for the images (for example if you have them hosted on a server like Amazon S3).
The name of the image file that you write in the CSV has to coincide with the name of the image uploaded to your server (if not, it won’t display it correctly because it won’t find it).

Import products to WooCommerce

The first of the two features of having this CSV file is to import products to your WooCommerce website (the other is the opposite, export).

We are going to go step by step, and at the end of this section, we will make a practical case so that you can see it more clearly.

Adding new products

One of the advantages that we have already mentioned above in this article is that of creating new products in a massive way.

The most important thing here is have filled in correctly the CSV that WooCommerce provides.

The rest practically does itself!

The importation of the products is done in WooCommerce > Products.

When you select “Import”, a kind of wizard will open, in which you will be asked to upload the CSV file in question, which cannot exceed one GB in size (don’t worry, you already have to have thousands of products for this to work). happen).

As you go through the wizard, you will be “telling” WooCommerce what each thing is.

That is, you have to map the column names of your CSV file, with the field names of the WooCommerce products.

Thanks to the fact that we have used an official template, this will be very easy for us to do.

Now we will simply have to complete the import process, and all products, in theory, will be successfully added to your website’s database.

Editing existing products

If you already have an online store running with WooCommerce, with many products already uploaded, and you didn’t know that they can be edited massively, this section is dedicated to you.

If you are already working with your online store, with the CSV file that you have been using from the beginning on your website, the operation to edit your products is the same as when you create them for the first time.

Export WooCommerce Products

Here it comes into play again if you already have the products uploaded to your WooCommerce website, and for whatever reason, you have decided to create a new WooCommerce website, and continue selling your products there.

When exporting them, it’s even simpler that when you import them.

The option is located right next to the place you already know for import.

When you click on the “Export” option, a screen opens (it is no longer a wizard with several steps, now it is only one), where you will select:

Which columns you want to be exported.
What kind of products do you want to be exported?
Which categories do you want to export.
Export personalized information in the process (all the information that does not come by default with WooCommerce, in relation to a product).

By clicking “Generate CSV”, the file will be downloaded to your computer, which you will have to import (through the process you already know) to the destination website you have.

In the video below we review what was spoken, in a visual way, so that it is even clearer for you.

conclusion

As we have seen, the WooCommerce product import and export options can be very complicated at a technical level, if you do not know in advance what you are going to find.

These functionalities work (forgive the redundancy) thanks to a csv-filewhich you can find in a “virgin” or blank way, on the official WooCommerce page, or in this same article a little higher.

Knowing that CSV file and embracing all of its possibilities is what is going to make you can have hundreds, even thousands of products a dayin a relatively easy way, and without complications.

There is no longer any fear of managing an online store with many products, because you will not have to go “one by one” editing them every time it is necessary.

you have in your hands one tool that comes by default with WooCommerce and WordPressvery powerful at a technical level, and that not everyone uses or knows.

And if you think that you are missing something to get to know WooCommerce in depth, I recommend that you do this , which will help you improve your online store.

I hope this article has been very useful to you, and that you try as many times as necessary until you become an import and export expert.

A big hug and see you in the next…