How to Delete Field Values While Importing WooCommerce Products?

If you own a WooCommerce store, you might need to import products for various reasons, such as updating the product information or listing products on a different marketplace. 

However, you might not always want to import the whole set of products and their associated field values. Sometimes, you may find it necessary to delete some field values or even make updates instead.  

For instance, consider that you want to update a set of product information in your WooCommerce store with an import file. If you have removed the field values from the import file, WooCommerce will skip the update of those particular fields. This means that WooCommerce will not delete the existing values in a field if the corresponding field in the import file is empty. 

You cannot rely on the bulk update via import to delete some field information in WooCommerce. The standard WooCommerce importer lacks an option to directly delete field values during import. 

Relying on third-party WooCommerce import-export plugins is recommended because they provide advanced options such as field deletion. Free import-export tools like Product Import Export for WooCommerce simplify the process, making it hassle-free. 

In this article, we will examine how to delete the existing field values with the WooCommerce product import plugin. 

As mentioned earlier, WooCommerce does not remove existing product field values by default if no new value is available to replace them. So, you will need to use a plugin to help you with this process. 

Product Import Export for WooCommerce is a free plugin from WebToffee that enables you to delete field values while importing WooCommerce products. Let’s see how the plugin can import empty product field values. 

This is a sample CSV of the products exported using the free product import plugin.

The highlighted changes have been made to the file. Here we are going to change the sales price of a couple of products and delete the sales price of a single item.

You will now have to update the changes you made in your WooCommerce store. Follow the instructions below to do so. 

1. Install and Activate the Plugin 

• Go to Plugins > Add New in your WooCommerce admin panel and search for the Product Import Export Plugin for WooCommerce.

• Install the plugin and then activate it. Once it is activated, you can proceed with the import process.

2. Select a Post Type 

After activating the plugin,

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

3. Select Advanced Import Method

Choose the method for importing products to your console. The plugin offers two options, Quick and Advanced Import. 

Let’s go with the default import option Advanced Import.

• Now select the CSV file with the updated product values.
• Select the delimiter used in the CSV file. By default, this is a ‘comma.’ If you have used a different one, you may change the delimiter to that. 

4. Choose the Import Columns 

Choose the columns that you want to import. You may only have to configure this if you want to omit to import some columns. Otherwise, you can skip this configuration and directly skip to the next step. 

5. Import the updated data

You have the option to import the empty cell value here. When you delete a cell value, the cell will now occupy an empty string. Usually, the tool will ignore this empty cell and will keep the previous field data. However, you can change this setting here.

• Choose Update corresponding to the field If the product exists in the store. This will help you update the products instead of adding them as new products.
• Now choose Yes corresponding to Update even if empty values.
• Now, click on Import.

Once the import process is completed, the field values that you deleted will be empty.

For example, the sales price of the product ‘Black trousers’ is now deleted.

In a similar way, you can bulk delete different field values within WooCommerce by using the above feature.

The Product Import Export for WooCommerce plugin is available in the premium version in addition to the free one. The premium version offers several additional features over the free version customizations. For instance, the premium version supports multiple file formats like XML, TSV, XLS, and XLSX in addition to CSV. The plugin also offers additional filters and customization options. 

Some of the additional features of this premium plugin include, 

• Variable and subscription product type support 
• Import process scheduling 
• Exporting WooCommerce product images in a separate CSV file 
• Supports additional features and customizations required for advanced import and export 
• Supports the import and export of third-party plugin fields

The products added to a WooCommerce store are subject to changes. They have to be dynamically updated to keep up with the changing atmosphere. In some situations, instead of changing, you may have to remove some fields altogether.

However, manually doing it by opening each product in your store is cumbersome. Therefore it is wise to use a plugin like Product Import Export for WooCommerce to help you with the process.

Hope this article was of interest to you. Do let us know what you think in the comments.