Import & Export

Overview

Products → Import & Export moves your product catalog in and out of the site:

• Import a spreadsheet of products to add them all at once, or to update excerpts, categories and order across the whole catalog.
• Export every product as a spreadsheet (CSV) to edit or keep, or as a JSON file to copy them to another Dirigible site.

You can also get there from the Import and Export buttons beside Add New Product at the top of the products list.

Dirigible Products are showcase pages, not a store: there are no prices or stock, and nothing here touches WooCommerce products.

You need an Editor or Administrator account. Importing also needs permission to upload files, because featured images are downloaded into the Media Library.

Export

1. Go to Products → Import & Export and stay on the Export tab.
2. Choose Spreadsheet (CSV) to open the file in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, or JSON to import it on another Dirigible site.
3. Turn on Include drafts and private ones if you want those too. Off, the file holds only published products.
4. Select Download export file.

Import a spreadsheet

The quickest start is Download a blank spreadsheet on the Export tab: it has every column with the right header. Or export your current catalog, edit it, and import it back.

1. Fill in one row per product. Only Title is required. Leave out any column you don't need.
2. Save it as CSV (in Excel: File → Save As → CSV UTF-8).
3. Go to the Import tab and drop the file on the box, or select Choose a file.
4. Nothing changes yet. You see every row with what will happen to it:
   • New: the product isn't on this site, so it's added.
   • Update: it's already here and the row has changes. The list names them (Excerpt, Categories, Featured image…).
   • Skip (No changes): it's already here and nothing differs.
   • Error: the row can't be imported, for example because its title is empty.
5. Untick any product you don't want brought in.
6. Choose what happens to products already on the site: Update it from the file, or Leave it as it is (only add new ones). If the file has no Status column, choose whether new products are added Published or as Drafts.
7. Select Import. Keep the page open until it finishes. If it's interrupted, open the page again and select Resume import: nothing is added twice.

Columns

Columns the import doesn't know, like Price or SKU, are listed in the preview and ignored. Column headers can be in any case, and a small typo is fine: the preview tells you how each header was read.

Updating products that are already on the site

A row updates an existing product when it has the same web address (Slug), then the same title. The preview shows which product each row matched and why. If two products share a name, include the Slug column so each row finds the right one.

Only what's in the spreadsheet changes. An empty cell never clears anything, so you can import a sheet with just titles and new categories without touching any photos or product pages. To clear a field, edit that product.

Updated products keep their status and web address.

Copy products to another Dirigible site

Export as JSON on one site and import the file on the other. A JSON file carries everything above: product pages exactly as written, featured images, categories and order. Images are downloaded from the site the file came from, so that site needs to be online. Images placed inside a product page still point at the original site; replace them in the editor if that site is going away.

Undo an import

When an import finishes, select Undo this import. It deletes the products that import added, the images it downloaded and the categories it added, and puts every product it updated back exactly as it was. A product edited after the import is left as it is and listed, and an image or category that something else now uses is kept. Undo stays available for 7 days.