Changelog

When we first launched the Ablestar Bulk Product Editor back in 2017 the app supported about 30 basic fields like price, tags, and product title. Since then that list has not stopped growing; we now support metafields, multilocation inventory, Google Shopping and custom actions like sorting variants.

These are a lot of options to fit into a single drop down menu and it can be hard to find the specific field you want. To fix this we've redesigned the way that you can select fields and actions in the app:

The new selector makes it easier to see all the possible options and can quickly be operated 100% by keyboard.

Learn more about the new field selector.

We've added a new filter which lets you search for products that do not start with a specific string. This is especially useful for filtering SKUs where you might want to exclude all SKUs that have a common prefix.

Read more search tips for the Ablestar Bulk Product Editor.

We added support for Shopify Markets to the Ablestar Bulk Product Editor. Now you are able to:

• Bulk update fixed price lists for one or more markets with a spreadsheet
• Map fixed prices for markets to a product when you create them
• Export fixed price lists to a spreadsheet

You can view your Shopify Markets data by opening up the app and navigating to Settings -> Shopify Markets in the left-hand menu:

Depending on when you installed the app you might be prompted to grant the app new permissions before proceeding. This is required so that we can access the Shopify Markets data through the API.

Learn more about bulk editing Shopify Markets price lists.

Earlier this month Shopify made a change so you can use metafields as conditions for automated collections.

Since the Bulk Product Editor maintains a copy of your product data in its database we reimplement the logic for smart collections so you can quickly run searches in the app without running into API limits.

We've updated this logic to support automated collections with metafield conditions.

We've added a search filter to the Bulk Product Editor to identify products that are completely out of stock:

We already had a search filter for a product's total inventory however searching for "total inventory = 0" might still display in-stock products if you have negative inventory levels on other variants.

For example, if a product has two variants and one variant has 1 unit in stock and the second variant has a stock level of -1, the total inventory for the product will be 0. (Shopify treats this situation the same way.)

The Product is completely out of stock filter however, will only match on products where none of its variants have an inventory level greater than zero.

Previously you could sort Shopify variants by clicking on the 'Sort Variants' link in the left-hand menu. We've moved this functionality to an action for an in-app edit.

To sort variants you can filter for the products you want to reorder, click on 'Edit Products', and then choose 'Sort Variants' from the 'Field to Edit' dropdown.

We've made this change so you can sort variants on any set of products instead of being limited to filtering by vendor.

Learn more about sorting Shopify variants.

You could already use the Bulk Product Editor to search for blank values (for example, to find products with no SKUs) but now you can also search for products that have a value set:

In technical terms, this will match on fields that are neither null nor an empty string.

This can be useful for filtering for which products to export or for edits where you want to use a field as a placeholder value.

You can now use the Bulk Product Editor to edit product recommendations for Shopify's Search & Discovery app. No more manually setting up related or complimentary products one at a time.

To edit the data in bulk, choose one of the fields in the "Search & Discovery" section of the "Field to Edit" dropdown:

Then you can proceed to configure the edit as usual.

Learn more about bulk editing Shopify's Search & Discovery fields.

We added two new ways to edit text that will make it easier to remove words from the start or end of HTML product descriptions:

• Remove text from a word to the end
• Remove text up to and including a word

With these options you can specify a word (or HTML tag) and remove everything before or after it, including that text.

We've seen lots of merchants include some generic information like shipping times in each product description. Previously we recommended using the Search and Replace edit to remove this kind of text however the presence of HTML tags and invisible characters can make it hard to get right.

Learn more about editing HTML descriptions in Shopify

We've made several improvements to the autocomplete functionality in the Bulk Editor. These affect product searches for tags, vendors and product types.

New tags, vendors, and product types will show in the autocomplete list almost immediately after they're first added to your Shopify store. We've also increased performance of autocompleting for stores with a large amount of unique tags.

You'll notice a new layout when you go to the page to generate a spreadsheet of your product data. The file format options have been moved up and the options below will change depending on which format you choose.

This change was made to support additional file formats (like Google Shopping) that have a different set of configurations that the current formats.

You can now use metafield values as dynamic placeholders when doing a metafield edit. For example, you have a "Country of Origin" metafield you could set the add the following text to all your product descriptions:

This product was made in [COUNTRY OF ORIGIN VALUE].

Learn more about using placeholders for text edits.

An Automatic Product Rule will be paused if the app detects that the rule is continuously being applied against the same product. This situation most commonly occurs when two automations are acting against eachother, changing a field back and forth.

You can now opt to receive an email if one of your Product Rules gets paused for this reason. You can configure these notifications on the Settings page in the Product Rules section near the bottom.

We are establishing a code freeze between November 21 and November 30. During this period we will only deploy critical fixes. The idea is to reduce the possibility of introducing bugs and unexpected system interactions that could cause the service to be compromised during the peak days of the holiday season.

After November 30 we will resume deploying changes as usual.

When using the Bulk Product Editor you can now filter for products by the number of variants the it has. The option is named Variant Count in the filter dropdown menu:

Keep in mind that all products in Shopify have at least one variant. Products with a single variant are displayed differently in the Shopify Admin but still have a variant.

Previously, a separate edit was created each time a product rule ran automatically against a product. The edit was created so there would be an audit log of activity but this resulted in a large number of edits for busy stores.

Starting today, all product rule modifications for a specific rule are grouped together as a single edit for that date:

The Bulk Product Editor now supports searching and editing the Product Category field. (Please note that up until September 2022 the "Product Category" field was called the "Standard Product Type" field.)

There's full autocomplete support for the categories to minimize input errors and you can bulk edit the Product Category field with a few clicks.

Learn more about bulk editing the Product Category field in Shopify

With Shopify multilocation inventory you can track the inventory quantity of a single product at different locations or warehouses. Today you can set which locations to track the inventory at across multiple products at once using the Bulk Product Editor.

We've also added a search filter to identify if a product is connected to a location or not.

Used together, these new features allow you to quickly identify

Learn more about connecting inventory to locations in bulk.

We've added support for in-app edits to modify metafields that are of the color list (list.color in the API) type. With the list edit you can set the metafield to a new sequence of colors or add/remove a certain number of elements from the start/end of the list.

When you run an in-app edit to modify Google Shopping Categories the category input is now selectable instead of being a plain text input box. This should prevent input errors and ensure that the category ID is correct.

Learn more about bulk editing Google Shopping Categories