Products can always be added to your store one at a time using the + Add New Product button on your catalog page. However, there are times when adding many products at once is highly beneficial. You can add products in bulk by importing a CSV file containing the product attributes. Once you learn a couple key techniques, importing products is the fastest way to upload or edit your catalog.

Part 1: Prepare the CSV file containing your products

What are CSV Files?

A CSV (comma separated values) file contains plain text entries separated by delimiters. Each entry represents a cell in a spreadsheet, each line represents a new row, and each delimiter (comma, semicolon, or tab) indicates where one entry ends and another entry begins.

You can edit your CSV file with spreadsheet editors, like Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, or LibreOffice.

If you don't have access to those options, you can edit any CSV with plain text editors like Notepad for Windows or TextEdit for Mac.

To see the import settings in your store, navigate to Catalog > Products on the left-hand sidebar of your Shop dashboard, then click Import Products.

CSV Download Examples

If you'd like to download a CSV to start from, check out the links below. You can download either the product CSV from Bistro 360 or a blank product CSV with only the headers so you can fill it out on your own. Once you've got your products entered in a CSV, you can upload it to your store!

Download Bistro 360 Product CSV

Download blank CSV to start from scratch

CSV File Format

To view your import settings, click Catalog > Products and click Import Products.

The Product import tool recognizes up to 25 product attributes. This means your CSV may contain up to 25 columns. Here is a brief description of each attribute:

To find the ID of the shipping method you’d like to enable/disable for a product via import, navigate to the Shipping & Pickup tab, click on the shipping method in question, and copy its ID from the browser’s address bar as in the example below.

Alternatively, you can set up one product manually in the required way, export it, find IDs of the shipping methods enabled/disabled for it in the downloaded CSV file and use them in your import file.

Part 2: Import products to your store

From your Shop App dashboard, click Catalog > Products from the left column. Click Import or Export Products at the top of the page, and select Import Products from the drop down menu. 

From here, a menu will appear, where you will set the configurations for your import.

Configure your CSV settings

CSV Contents

Each line in a product import CSV represents a list of attributes associated with a certain product in your store. Each attribute is separated by a delimiter that should be consistent throughout the file.

The first line in the file generally represents the column headers.

Note: If your file contains column headers, check the Skip first line option in your import settings so this line is excluded from the product attributes.

CSV Delimiters

Delimiters indicate where one product attribute ends and another one begins. There are three delimiter options for your CSV files:

1. commas
2. semicolons
3. tabulation (tab key)

When you import your CSV file, please select the same delimiter used in the import settings.

Encoding

The encoding settings determine what kind of characters are included in your CSV.  The importer supports more than ten charsets, including UTF-8, UTF-16, and US-ASCII. When you import your CSV file, please select the same encoding used in your CSV file for proper import. If your CSV includes standard letters and numbers, chances are good that UTF-8 is a good option for you.

Import your CSV file

Once you’ve prepared your CSV file, click Catalog > Products and click Import products.

In the import dialogue window:

1. Click Choose file and select the CSV file from your computer.
2. Select the delimiter used in your file (comma, semicolon or tabulation).
3. Select the character encoding used in your file:
   
4. Arrange columns (drag and drop) to mimic your file:
   
5. Uncheck the columns that are not used in the file.
6. Use the Skip column option to exclude up to three columns:
   
7. Check the option Delete all products and categories before import if you want to clear the catalog before import.
   
8. Click Import.

You should now see the imported products in your catalog!