Shopify product CSV: columns, rules and a template

Shopify imports products from a CSV file in UTF-8, with the headers in the first row spelled the way Shopify's own sample file spells them. Only Title is required for a new product. A product with more than one photo also needs a URL handle, because its photos sit on extra rows that share that handle.

These are the columns Cataloger writes, straight from its exporter. Columns it leaves out keep Shopify's defaults.

The first row of a product carries the product. Each further photo gets its own row with only the URL handle, the photo link, its position and its alt text. Shopify takes up to 250 photos per product and copies them during the import, so the links only need to work until it finishes.

Every product comes in with Status set to draft and Published on online store set to false. Nothing appears in your store until you publish it.

URL handles are built from the title and the lot number, using letters, numbers and dashes, and kept unique across the file.

• Title is blank.
• Price or Compare-at price isn't a plain number.
• SEO title is longer than 70 characters, SEO description longer than 320, or image alt text longer than 512.
• A product has more than 250 photos.

Warnings don't stop it: a blank price, which Shopify reads as 0.00, photo links that aren't public https, and tags with symbols or accented letters.

Cataloger never sets a price itself. Your price rule writes the Price column from each estimate, such as the middle of the range rounded to $5, and can go up to 500% of the low, middle or high estimate.

The first rows of the file Cataloger writes for two demo products, priced at the middle of the estimate rounded to $5. The blank template has the same header row and no products.

The same notes Cataloger shows next to the download: