Sometimes you will want to delete your products in bulk. . The most common method to achieve this is by selecting all the products you want to delete from the Products page and then perform the bulk action by moving products to trash.
But if you have hundreds of products to delete, the above mentioned method will be hectic. This is where the second, simple and effective method comes into play. The extension plugin Product Import Export Plugin For WooCommerce will be very useful to delete products via the CSV effectively.
How to delete products through CSV import?
First of all, install Product Import Export Plugin For WooCommerce to your WooCommerce store and activate the plugin.
Make sure that you have the file, that doesn’t have any of the products that needed to be deleted, in your computer, another server or in any other location accessible via URL
Now, follow the steps given below and you can easily delete products in bulk through CSV import.
- Select file to be imported from one of the three sources
- Select option to delete products in the store
- Map imported columns to product data fields and Import
Step 1: Select file to be imported from one of the three sources
Log into your account and use the sidebar navigation menu to:
- Navigate to the WoCommerce > Product Im-Ex
- Click on the Import sub-tab, you will be taken to the ‘Import’ page
- Select a source of file to be imported
- Method 1: Select a file from your computer
- Method 2: Provide FTP details
- Method 3: Enter the URL of the file
Method 1: Select a file from your computer
By using this method you can select a file(less than 1GB size) from your computer by clicking on the Choose file button. Then, select the file that need to be imported
Method 2: Provide FTP details
This method helps you to import products from another server via FTP. For that enable FTP import and fill out all the necessary fields as shown below.
Method 3: Enter the URL of the file
Provide the URL of the CSV where it can be downloaded from in the Enter the URL of the file text field. It is to be noted that the URL should be a public URL for it to be accessed for files for importing.
Example: https://www.webtoffee.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Product_WooCommerce_Sample_CSV.csv
From the above three methods select one of the convenient methods and follow the steps below
Step 2: Select option to delete products in the store
From the Import page scroll down to Available Options section. From there enable Delete existing products checkbox to delete existing products that are not present in the CSV. Then, click on the Upload file and import button. Refer below screenshot.
Step 3: Map imported columns to product data fields and Import
After completing the second step set up you will be navigated to the Import – Map Fields page. Here you can map the CSV file to the WooCommerce data fields. Mapping is required to ensure that the column headers in the CSV file match with the corresponding WooCommerce data fields. Select a mapping file if you already have one.
After, click on the Submit button you can see the progress of the import as given below
Once you have successfully imported the products all the existing products in the store will also get ridden.
Conclusion
By following these simple steps you will be able to delete hundreds of products within a short period of time as well as you can import new products at the same time. Learn about getting started and working with the plugin from the plugin documentation.
Comment (1)
Kristian Brown
August 14, 2020
This is almost 100% the opposite way I’d want to remove products in bulk – by uploading all the details of the ones I want to keep?
I searched everywhere to find somewhere to help me delete products based on a list of SKUs given to me by a shop manager. In the end I’ve written some simple instructions using SQL to convert SKU’s to post_ids then clean up the post table and post_meta tables. I’ve shared it here; https://kristianbrown.co.uk/delete-woocommerce-products-using-skus/