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.

1. Select file to be imported from one of the three sources
2. Select option to delete products in the store
3. 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:

1. Navigate to the WoCommerce > Product Im-Ex
2. Click on the Import sub-tab, you will be taken to the ‘Import’ page
3. 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.