Export catalog items

You can export products, SKUs, collections, and catalogs to a file in CSV (Comma Separated Value) format so you can work with them outside of Commerce and easily import changes back into your Commerce environment.

This section applies to both OSF and Storefront Classic. This section applies to Open Storefront Framework (OSF) and Storefront Classic.

This section includes the following topics:

Export products, SKUs, and collections

Follow these steps to export products, SKUs, or collections to a spreadsheet:

  1. On the Catalog page, click the Export button.
  2. Select the items to export: Products, Product Variants (SKUs), or Collections.
  3. If your Commerce instance includes multiple catalogs, specify which catalogs to export from: Select All Catalogs to export the selected items from all catalogs. This is the default selection.
  4. If your store supports more than one language, select the language to export from the Language list. This list does not appear if your store supports only one language.
  5. If you want to export a subset of items, select Filter Items Being Exported See Specify export filter criteria for more information.
  6. Click Export.

    Once you click the Export button, the operation cannot be canceled and you cannot work on other tasks until the export is complete.

  7. When the export is complete, your browser displays a dialog box where you choose whether to open or save the spreadsheet.

    If you click Cancel in this dialog box, the export file is not saved and you must repeat the export procedure.

  8. See View the Exported data for information about how to understand the exported data.

Export catalogs

Follow these steps to export information about all catalogs to a spreadsheet:

  1. On the Catalog page, click the Export button.
  2. Select Catalogs from the list of items to export.
  3. If you want to export a subset of items, select Filter Items Being Exported See Specify export filter criteria for more information.
  4. Click Export.

    Once you click the Export button, the operation cannot be canceled and you cannot work on other tasks until the export is complete.

  5. When the export is complete, your browser displays a dialog box where you choose whether to open or save the spreadsheet.

    If you click Cancel in this dialog box, the export file is not saved and you must repeat the export procedure.

  6. Read View the Exported data for information about how to understand the exported data.

Specify export filter criteria

By default, when you export products, SKUs, collections, and catalogs, Commerce exports all of the type of item you selected. To export fewer items, you can create rules that filter the items based on properties you specify, such as a parent collection for products.

Note: You cannot save filter rules. If you select a different type of item to export or navigate away from the Catalog page, any filter rules you created will not persist when you return.

To create a rule while exporting items, follow these steps:

  1. In the Export Catalog dialog, select Filter Items Being Exported.

    The operators you see depend on the type of property you selected.

  2. If you selected a specific catalog to export from and that catalog has filtered views, you can select one from the Select Filtered View list. The default selection is All Filtered Views.
  3. Click Add Rule.
  4. Select a property from the drop-down list in the rule. The available properties depend on the type of items you are exporting. You can select only one property per rule.
  5. Select an operator that links the property to a value that you will specify in the next step.

    The operators you see depend on the type of property you selected.

  6. Select or enter a value for the property.

    For some values, such as Parent Collections, Commerce displays a list for you to choose from. For others, such as Name or ID, you must type in a value. The rule editor does not validate any text, numeric, or date values you enter.

  7. If you create more than one rule, select one of the following options from the Match list to specify how the rules behave together. You can select only one option for the entire set of rules.
    • Any: If an item matches any rule in the set, it is exported.
    • All: (default) If an item matches all the rules in the set, it is exported
  8. Click Export.

View the exported data

The exported CSV file can be viewed and edited using a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. The default file name follows the format <YYMMDDhhmmss>export.csv. For example, a file exported January 30, 2017 at 11:43:27 AM is named 170130114327export.csv.

The exported data follows a specific format that can be used to re-import the spreadsheet to Commerce. The following figure shows an example of exported product data in a spreadsheet:

exported data in a spreadsheet

Row One: Repository, Item Type, Formatting Options, and Process Messages

The first row is reserved for the repository path and item type, any formatting options, and any warning or error messages.

  • The first column of row one (cell A1) contains the repository path and the item type separated by a colon. For example: /atg/commerce/catalog/ProductCatalog:product
  • Columns two through six (cells B1, C1, D1, E1, and F1) contain data formatting options:

TIMEFORMAT appears in the third column (cell C1) and shows the format used for dates with a time stamp, for example, TIMEFORMAT=MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss.

If your store supports more than one language and you selected a different export language than the default language for your store, LOCALE appears in the fifth column (cell E1) and shows the ISO locale format for the language, for example, en_US.

If your Commerce instance includes multiple catalogs and you selected a specific catalog to export from,CATALOG appears in the sixth column (cell F1) and shows the catalog ID, for example, CATALOG=movieCatalog.

Row Two: Property Headings

The second row displays column headings that contain the property names of the exported properties. The ID property is always the first column (cell A2) and is always labeled “ID” regardless of the actual repository name of the ID property.

Note: The spreadsheet contains the Property ID and Label of the property and not the localized display name.

Rows Three and Greater: Data

Catalog data begins in the third row and continues for the remainder of the spreadsheet. If an item does not have a value for a property, the corresponding cell is blank.

Data for filtered catalogs

When you export products or SKUs and your Commerce instance contains filtered catalogs, the second row of the exported spreadsheet includes column headings that contain the following property IDs:

  • The coreProduct column specifies whether the item is a core product in the catalog.
  • The filteredCatalogs column includes the Catalog IDs that specify filtered catalog the item belongs to.

See Work with filtered catalogs for more information.

Data for exported catalogs

When you export catalogs, the second row of the exported spreadsheet always displays column headings that contain the following internal property IDs.

  • The ID column includes the Catalog ID for each catalog.
  • The displayName column includes the Catalog Name for each catalog.
  • The catalogVersion column includes an integer that specifies the type of catalog. 1 specifies a legacy catalog, 2 specifies an independent catalog, and 3 specifies a filtered catalog. See Understand catalogs for more information.

    Note: You cannot change a catalog’s catalogVersion value if you import the file back into Commerce. If you do, the import will fail.

  • The rootCategories column includes a comma-separated list of Collection IDs for the collections in each legacy catalog.

    This column contains values only for catalogs whose catalogVersion value is 1.

  • The rootNavigableCategory column includes the navigable root collection for each catalog whose catalogVersion value is 2. The default value for this property is rootCategory.
  • The rootNonNavigableCategory column includes the non-navigable root collection for each for each catalog whose catalogVersion value is 2. The default value for this property is nonNavigableCategory.
  • The defaultCategoryForProducts column includes the Collection ID of the collection that will automatically be the parent of any product created or imported in this catalog without a specified parent.

    This column contains values only for catalogs whose catalogVersion value is 2.