How to Export WooCommerce Products in WordPress?

Managing your WooCommere products is an integral part of maintaining your store. As a store owner, you may have to perform several product-related tasks, such as migrating products between sites, updating data in bulk, keeping a data backup, etc. This article outlines the various methods for transferring products efficiently.

When you have a large store with a plethora of products, manually handling them would take huge amounts of time and energy. The vast amount of data requires significant time and effort to handle tasks like updating product information, adjusting prices, or moving products between locations.

In addition to being labor-intensive, manual processes heighten the chances of making mistakes, such as entering data incorrectly, failing to complete transfers, or overlooking products. Even minor errors can throw a wrench in your store’s operations, resulting in inaccurate listings, inventory mismatches, and customer dissatisfaction.

Using specialized WordPress tools like data migration plugins can automate the process, leading to smoother and more accurate product migrations, reducing the chances of errors, and enhancing your workflow. These tools are foolproof mechanisms for exporting WooCommerce products in bulk.

In this article, we will go through the different methods with which you can bulk export WooCommerce products.

There are several reasons why a store owner would choose to export their products, especially bulk export. Some of the common scenarios are listed below.

• Bulk Update – Exporting products to a spreadsheet or CSV file allows you to make bulk edits to product information, such as prices, descriptions, or stock levels, more efficiently.
• Transfer products – If you plan to switch to a different eCommerce platform or another WooCommerce site, exporting your products ensures a smooth migration to the new environment.
• Data Backup – Exporting products and their associated data creates a backup of your product data, protecting it from accidental deletions or data loss due to technical issues.
• Multi-channel Selling – Exporting your product catalog lets you easily list your products on platforms like Google Merchant Center or Amazon. This enables you to sell across multiple marketplaces and channels by generating product feeds compatible with different platforms.

Store owners may have several other reasons for exporting product data. Whatever the reason, you can easily export the required data using the export methods detailed below.

WordPress offers built-in tools for exporting data from your WordPress account, such as posts, pages, products, media, etc., in XML format.

To export your products and product data using the built-in WordPress export tool,

1. Navigate to Tools > Export from your WordPress dashboard.
2. Choose what to export as Products.
3. Click on the Download Export File button.

This will download an XML file with your product information. You can import this file using WordPress’s built-in Import tool.

In addition to the export tool, you can use the default export option in WooCommerce to export your WooCommerce products using a CSV file.

To export WooCommerce products and product data to a CSV file,

1. Go to Products > All Products from your WordPress dashboard.
2. Here, click on Export.

3. You will be asked to select the columns, product types, and product categories that should be exported. Choose the required data.
4. You can also opt-in to export the custom meta for the export fields if you like.
5. Once selected, click on Generate CSV.

This will download a CSV file with the product information that you asked for.

Here is a snapshot of a sample export CSV file.

Exporting WooCommerce product data is as easy as that, even with the default options.

However, the limitations in the customization options here might disable you from fulfilling your advanced requirements, such as:

• Selective product export (except selective export based on product types and categories)
• Export column adjustments
• Export file format selection, etc.

If you have any such requirement, you might have to rely on dedicated third-party plugins to help you with the process. Next, we will explore one such plugin that simplifies product export while providing greater control, allowing you to manage the process more effectively.

Even though WordPress and WooCommerce, by default, offer tools to help you with the export process, you may not be able to attain your advanced requirements. For example, if you only want to export products that are currently in stock, there is no point in using the export tool or the WooCommerce feature.

This is where you would need a plugin with several customization and filtering options. The free WooCommerce Product Import Export plugin by WebToffee enables you to export only the data that you require, using several filters and advanced customizations. 

Moreover, this plugin will also export the image metadata along with the product images, a feature unavailable in the default WooCommerce export feature.

Take a look at our video guide on importing and exporting products with WebToffee’s plugin.

Now, lets go through the step-by-step process for exporting WooCommerce products using the Product Import Export for WooCommerce plugin.

Step 1: Install WebToffee Product Import Export for WooCommerce Plugin

The first step in exporting WooCommerce products using the plugin is to install and activate the plugin itself. Product Import and Export for WooCommerce is a free plugin that is available in the WordPress plugin directory.

For this,

• Navigate to Plugins > Add New Plugin.
• Search for “Product Import Export for WooCommerce” plugin.
• Then Install and Activate the plugin.

Step 2: Choose Product as Post Type to Export

Once the plugin is installed,

• Go to WebToffee Import Export (Basic) > Export.
• Choose the post type to export as Product.

Step 3: Select Advanced Export Method

You can then proceed to select the export method.

There are two export methods that you can employ to export the products. They are Quick export and Advanced export.

Quick export can be used if you want to export the whole of your products with all the basic export fields. With quick export, you can complete the export process with just a single click.

Advanced export is preferred if you want to select and omit certain products or fields from your export file. You can do so with the help of several filtration, column selection, and advanced options.

• Let’s select Advanced export and proceed to the next step.

Step 3: Filter Product Export Data

Filter out the data that needs to be exported with the help of the filter options here.

You have several options such as limiting the number of products, excluding the first n products, exporting specific products based on their categories, tags, etc, and more.

Once you have selected your required configuration, proceed to the next step.

Step 4: Map & Reorder Product Columns

Here you can select which columns of product data should be exported, the name of the corresponding column in the CSV file, the order of arrangement of the columns in the CSV, etc.

You can use the drag and reorder icons in this section to rearrange the positioning of the columns.

Once you have selected this you can move forward to the next step.

Step 5: Export Products

• Choose the batch size and the delimiter of the CSV file and export the CSV file.

On exporting, a CSV file will get downloaded to your system. It will have all the columns and the products that satisfy the selected criteria.

In addition to the free plugin, WebToffee also offers a premium version of the Product Import Export plugin for WooCommerce.

This premium version of the WooCommerce product export plugin offers several customizations and filters that are not offered through the basic version of the plugin. For instance, the pro version supports the export of CSV, XML, XLS, and XLSX files. The plugin lets you schedule the export action, offers several advanced filter and column options, etc.

Some of the other key features of the plugin include:

• Supports the export of variable, subscription, and custom product types
• Options to sort the columns based on the specified criteria
• Add third-party custom fields data columns to the export file
• Enable the export of products modified since the last export
• Scheduled export of product data
• Export product images in separate zip files

Exporting data from online retail outlets is highly important and challenging. It can be used to migrate data between WooCommerce sites, update product information in bulk, or back up data.

The product import export is a free plugin that lets you export all the data regarding your products to an external CSV or XML file. The plugin also lets you export product categories and product reviews in addition to the product data.

Hope this article was of interest to you. Feel free to drop a comment below if you have any questions or thoughts.