Introduction
If you run a Shopify store with more than a few products, no doubt at some point you will need to bulk edit the product descriptions in your store. For example, you may want to change the whole description, or perhaps you need to find and replace part of it.
Unfortunately, Shopify doesn't provide an easy way to do this, so you will need to use an app from the Shopify app store. We recommend using our app QuickEdit - Bulk Product Edit to easily bulk edit your product descriptions.
Getting started
First, install the app from the Shopify app store.
Once the app is installed, click "Create bulk edit" to start the process of creating the bulk edit task.
The item type to edit will already be set to "Product", so proceed to the next step of choosing which products to edit by adding conditions. There are a few different options for conditions, but they should all be pretty self-explanatory, so they won't be covered in this tutorial.
After adding the conditions, go down to the actions section, click "Add action", then click and choose "Product description" for the field to edit.
Product description edit options
The important thing to notice here is that since your product descriptions are saved as HTML code, you must use HTML in the product description text field in the app.
We recommend going to the product page in the Shopify admin and using the description field to help you preview the HTML code before entering it into the app. Click the "Show HTML" button at the top right of the description field to see the HTML code that you can enter into the app.
The pre-selected option will be to set the description to the specified HTML. You can also do actions like add to the beginning or end, or find and replace HTML.
Find and Replace HTML
When doing a find and replace action for the description, there are a few options, as shown in the image below:
Keep in mind this is a find-and-replace on the whole description HTML (not just the plain text). So to replace a portion of the description, copy the whole HTML part of that description to put in the find field, and the new HTML in the replace field. When doing this, it is highly recommended to keep the "Ignore HTML whitespace" option enabled so the HTML can be found even if the HTML code is indented or has extra whitespace in between tags.
To replace just a single word or short phrase, we recommend enabling the "Match whole word only" option. This will ensure the word is only replaced when it's not part of another word (so "car" won't match "carpet"). This option doesn't work well with HTML, so that's why it's disabled by default for descriptions.
Running the bulk edit
Once the conditions and actions are set up correctly, click the "Continue" button to proceed to the next step.
In the popup, type a name for the task so you can identify it later. You can also choose whether to schedule the task or run it immediately. Keep in mind task scheduling is a paid feature, so you will need to upgrade your plan first to enable this.
Click "Confirm", and then click "Run bulk edit" on the next confirmation popup.
The task should now be started, so go to the task history page to see its progress. If you have less than a few hundred products it should be done very soon, but it can take some time if you have several thousand products. Once a task starts the editing process, it can't be stopped. If you need to cancel it, wait for it to finish and then revert it.
Once the task finishes, you can revert if necessary, run again, or edit and create a new task.
Troubleshooting
If the task finishes without making any changes, then either no changes were needed, the conditions didn't match anything, or the HTML to find didn't match anything. Double-check all your conditions, entered text/HTML, and selected options, and try again.
Debugging tip: Pick a product you want to be edited, and examine each of the applicable fields while trying to think step-by-step about whether it's meeting all the conditions, whether the text/HTML-to-find will match with the chosen options (if applicable), and what each action is doing exactly.
If you exceed the current plan limits, the task will fail and you will be asked to upgrade your plan.
If the task fails with a server error, wait a bit and try again. Contact us if the issue persists. It might be a temporary issue with Shopify, or with our servers.
Conclusion
That's it! We know you have an amazing business, and we hope our app helped you make it better. Please consider leaving a review in the Shopify app store to show your appreciation! (seriously, it means a lot 😀)
