Export WooCommerce Products to CSV
Exporting products from a WooCommerce store to a CSV file becomes necessary at one point in time or another for multiple reasons. Exporting products to a CSV file is necessary if you want to migrate your products to another WooCommerce store in an efficient way. Exporting to CSV files can also be used to keep a backup of the products and the product data. And also, the exporting products of your WooCommerce store into a CSV file allows you to bulk edit the products in the store and then import the products back to the store to reflect the changes.
WooCommerce by default does provide the provision to import and export product data but has limitations. But, You can easily export all the products and product types (simple, variable, grouped, and external) in your WooCommerce store to a CSV file using a WooCommerce product export extension.
How to Export WooCommerce Products?
To export WooCommerce products to CSV files, first, you need to purchase, install, and activate Product Import Export Plugin in your WooCommerce store. The Plugin gives you a lot of control over the products that are exported to the CSV file. For example, if you only need a portion of the products to be exported in the CSV file, the offset and the limit fields in the export section help you to do just that.
Also, you can export products that belong to a category or selected categories, or you can just export only certain product types, etc.
After installing and activating the plugin, on the sidebar under the WooCommerce menu, you can see Product Im-Ex. So, to export the products in your WooCommerce store, from your WooCommerce store admin side dashboard, go to WooCommerce > Product Im-Ex.
This will take you to the Product Import Export plugin page. From the plugin page, on the Products tab, go to Export. This is the default page of the plugin. From this page, you can export all the products in your WooCommerce store into a CSV file.
The fields given in the export page can help you configure what data are exported to the CSV file and how they are exported. They are explained in detail as follows:
- Offset: Here you can set the number of products to be skipped before exporting to the CSV file. For example, if your store has 100 products and if you give the offset value is 10, the first 10 products will be skipped before the exporting. The resulting CSV will have a total of 90 products.
- Limit: In this field, you can set the number of products that should be exported to the CSV file. So, if the value in the field is 50, only 50 products will be exported to the resulting CSV.
The Offset and Limit field can thus be used to export a portion of the products. For example, if you need to export 50 products after skipping the first 10 products then what you need to do is give the value of 10 in the Offset field and 50 in the limit field. This will export product with the product number 11 to 60 in the resulting CSV.
- Product Categories: In this field, you can specify which categories of products you want to export in the CSV. The products belonging only those categories will be exported in the resulting CSV.
- Product Types: This field allows you to filter the product types (simple, variable. grouped, and external) of the products that are to be exported to the CSV.
- Sort Columns: This field allows you to enter the column name by which you can sort the products in the CSV file. You can sort the products by more than one column name by specifying the name of the columns separated by a comma (,).
- Delimiter: This field help you set the delimiter by which the values in the CSV will be separated. The default delimiter for the CSV file is a comma (,), but you can also use other special characters like /, ” “, |, @, and so on as a delimiter.
- Columns: In this section, from the Columns field, you can select the checkboxes of the required columns that are to be exported in the CSV. Also from the Column Name field, you can specify the name of the corresponding column header in the resulting CSV file
- Save the Export Mapping: If you wish to save the mapping file for exporting, you can enter the name of the export mapping file in this field. Otherwise, you can leave this field empty.
- Include hidden metadata: This field will allow you to include the hidden product metadata in the exported CSV file.
- Export Children SKU of the Grouped Product: By enabling this checkbox, you can link the parent and child products of the store using the SKU of the parent product instead of the product ID of the parent product.
- Convert Shortcodes to HTML: Enabling this checkbox will allow you to convert the shortcodes to HTML in the resulting CSV file.
- Export images as Zip file: When this option is chosen, the exported CSV will include only the names of the images of the products instead of the entire path/URL. To link the products with their corresponding images, all the images that are related to the products being imported will be downloaded to a zip file.
After the fields of the plugins have been configured according to the requirements, you can go ahead and click on Export Products. This will create a CSV file that will be downloaded to your local computer.
Exporting Products From the Products Page
Apart from exporting products from the CSV file, you can also export products from the products page on the admin side of the WooCommerce store. From the dashboard, go to the Products page.
From the products page, select the products that you want to export. After you have selected the products that you want to export, go to Bulk Actions > Download Products as CSV and click Apply.
This will export the products in the CSV and download the CSV file to your computer.
In this way, you have more control over which products are exported and you can export products, not in sequential order, but you have less control over how the CSV should be exported.
Read more about importing and exporting products from your WooCommerce store using the Product import Export plugin in the documentation.
Comments (10)
Leanne Hill
March 23, 2020
Hi Team, Im trying to get the export to folder working via ftp, but all my tests are proving to not create the csv file. I’ve given it both server paths and direct folder path. I’ve tried to have no file present and then also created the file in the folder. All permissions are set to 755 on both the directory and the file, but for some reason it’s not creating the file or updating the file.
Examples are server path /home12/sultryli/public_html/loveinleather/csv_files/ and then direct path /csv_files/ I can’t seem to find any clearer information on how to do this and the FTP connection tests work fine. Any help please?
Alan
March 23, 2020
Hi,
The issue you are facing with exporting the CSV file to the FTP server seems to be site-specific or FTP specific issues. Please reach us via support so that we can check the issue.
Leo
February 7, 2020
How to export the CSV to a specific folder instead of downloading the file?
The FTP settings is overkill since I just want to export to a directory within the server.
Alan
February 7, 2020
Hi,
The plugin supports exporting of CSV files either to the computer or to the FTP server. If you are required to export the CSV file to a directory within the server then you may please enable the FTP option and specify the FTP details and export path in the plugin settings. Once the FTP details are provided then you may please export the products from the export page.
Aleksandra Gushchina
September 15, 2019
Hi,
I have problem with encoding while exporting (cyrillic symbols don’t display correct). How can I change it?
Alan
September 16, 2019
Hi,
Our plugin is compatible with exporting Cyrillic/Special characters. The issue you are facing might be because the spreadsheet application you are using is not able to handle UTF-8 encoded CSV files properly. Please try using spreadsheet applications like LibreOffice which is proven to be better in handling UTF-8 encoded CSV files.
cweickert
July 12, 2018
IS there any way to export additional product fields? For example I added a field “NS ProductID” into the addition fields or More fields on the product.
It does not show up as a field I can export or import. How can this be done?
Mark
July 13, 2018
Hi,
Please enable the option Include hidden metadata while exporting to export your custom fields/ additional metadata.
Stephen
May 28, 2018
So I exported my products but the data for each product is all in one cell. How do I fix this?
Mark
May 28, 2018
Hi,
Our plugin by default export the CSV keeping comma as delimiter whereas your CSV viewer may not be using the same. Either you may change the delimiter settings of your CSV viewer or export by specifying appropriate delimiter in the plugin settings. Try with a semicolon ; as the delimiter.