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Bulk Update Categories Of WooCommerce Products

Last updated on September 26, 2023

Organizing the products categorically in an e-commerce platform can drive buyers to exactly what they are looking for. Shoppers often filter their searches to obtain the exact matches of what they want. Therefore, it is essential to organize your products under proper categories. In order to achieve this, use the Product import export plugin for WooCommerce which helps in categorizing products easily. The plugin allows you to organize products in multiple categories, subcategories and even update existing categories of products. To bulk update categories of WooCommerce products:

  1. Select the post type as Product.
  2. Select an import method.
  3. Map the import columns.
  4. Use advanced options and click on Import.

Let us update the categories of these WooCommerce products.

View of products with existing categories
View of products with existing categories

Alter the product category column in the input file

In the CSV file, let us add one more category for some of the products as highlighted below. If a product has multiple categories, separate them by ‘|’ and if a product has a category with a hierarchical structure, separate them by ‘>’.

Altering category column in input file
Altering category column in input file

Once the changes are made, save the input file and move to the next step of updating the product categories.

Bulk update categories  

To update the product categories in bulk, begin with the import process. Follow the steps in How to import products and on reaching Step 4, choose Update for the option: If product exists in the store.

This action will update all the existing product details with the new one, which includes product categories.

View of product categories updated in bulk
View of product categories updated in bulk