How to Export, Edit, and Import Shopify Store Data Using Excel

Shopify doesn’t connect to Excel out of the box, but the two work well together through CSV files. You can export products, customers, inventory, orders and reports from your Shopify admin, open them in Excel to edit or analyze, and import some of that data back to update your store. If you want a live link instead of files, an Excel add-in or a data app can connect a workbook to your store directly.

The key is knowing which data can make the full round trip and how to handle it in Excel without corrupting it. That’s what separates a quick bulk update from an import that overwrites good values.

How Excel Works With Shopify

There are two ways to use Excel for Shopify. The built-in route is a CSV round trip: export a file from the admin, work on it in Excel and, for supported data types, import it back. The other route is a direct connection through an Excel add-in or third-party app that reads store data into a workbook and can write changes back.

The CSV route costs nothing and covers most everyday tasks, but each file is a snapshot. Once you export it, it doesn’t change when your store does. Not every data type can be imported either, as the table below shows.

In practice, Excel serves two jobs for Shopify merchants. For products, inventory and customers, it’s an editing tool for changes that would take hours in the admin. For orders and reports, it’s an analysis tool for questions the built-in reports don’t answer the way you need.

Open Shopify Exports in Excel Without Breaking the Data

When you export products or customers, choose the option labeled CSV for Excel, Numbers, or another spreadsheet program. Shopify only imports and exports UTF-8 encoded CSV files, so how you open and save the file in Excel matters as much as the edits you make.

Double-clicking a CSV lets Excel guess each column’s format, which is where most problems start. A safer approach is to open a blank workbook, go to Data > From Text/CSV, select the file and confirm the file origin is UTF-8. Then choose Transform Data and set columns such as SKU, barcode and phone number to Text before loading them.

Setting those columns to Text prevents the changes Excel otherwise makes on its own:

• Leading zeros disappear: A barcode such as 012345678905 becomes 12345678905.
• Long numbers turn into scientific notation: A 12-digit UPC can display and save as 1.23457E+11.
• Special characters get garbled: Symbols such as é or ™ turn into odd characters if the file isn’t read and saved as UTF-8.

When you’re ready to import, save with File > Save As and choose CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited). Keep a separate .xlsx copy if you’ve added formulas, notes or extra sheets, because a CSV holds only one sheet of plain values.

One more rule applies to product files specifically: don’t sort them. Sorting a product CSV can separate variants from their image URLs, and importing that sorted file can overwrite products with bad data that can’t be recovered. Use filters to view subsets instead.

Edit Store Data in Excel and Import It Back

Each data type has its own import rules, and the differences matter most when you’re updating records that already exist. Start every editing session with a fresh export, and test your import on a few rows before uploading the full file.

Products

To update existing products, edit your product export and import it from Products > Import with Overwrite products with matching handles selected. Shopify matches each row to a product by its URL handle, so leave that column untouched.

Overwriting treats blank cells and missing columns differently. A column that’s in the file but empty clears that value on the product, while a column you delete from the file keeps its current value. Therefore, the safest update file contains URL handle, Title and only the columns you’re changing.

For example, to raise prices on 300 products, keep URL handle, Title, the option name and value columns, SKU and Price, then delete everything else. The option columns stay because Shopify uses them to match variants, and leaving them out can replace your variants with a single default one. Each product file can be up to 15 MB, and an import can’t be canceled once it starts.

Inventory

Inventory has its own CSV, separate from the product file. Go to Products > Inventory > Export, choose one location or all of them, and select the All states format, which Shopify recommends because it includes overwrite protection.

In that format, each variant has one row per location. You change stock by entering the new count in the On hand (new) column, while On hand (current) holds a snapshot of the quantity at export time. Leave On hand (new) blank for any row you don’t want to change.

The current column is a safety check. If stock changed between your export and your import, for example because orders came in, Shopify rejects those rows and emails you. That’s why you should re-export rather than reuse an old inventory file.

Also note that location names must match your store’s exactly, including capitalization, and the SKU column in this file doesn’t update variant SKUs.

Customers

Customer data can be exported from Customers > Export, with optional fields for customer tags and metafields. To add or update contacts, import a CSV from Customers > Import. Selecting Overwrite existing customers that have the same email or phone number updates matching profiles.

Be careful with that overwrite option. Unlike the product import, it replaces all of a matching customer’s data, including tags, so include every value you want to keep. In addition, marketing consent columns accept only yes or no, and Total Spent and Total Orders are export-only fields that won’t import.

Excel is also handy for checking a file before you import it. If the same email or phone number appears more than once, Shopify imports only the last matching row and skips the others, so remove duplicates first. Excel’s Remove Duplicates tool on the Data tab handles this in a few clicks.

Analyze Shopify Orders and Sales in Excel

Order exports are where Excel often adds the most value, because you can slice sales data in ways the admin doesn’t offer. Go to Orders, filter the list if needed, click Export and choose the orders you want, such as orders within a date range. Small exports download right away, while larger ones are emailed to you and the store owner.

Before building anything, understand the file’s layout. An order with several products takes several rows, one per line item, and many order-level fields such as Total are left blank on the extra rows. As a result, summing the Total column across every row works, but counting rows overstates your number of orders.

For product-level analysis, the line item columns are what you need. For example, to see revenue by product:

1. Add a column named Line revenue with the formula =[@[Lineitem quantity]]*[@[Lineitem price]] after formatting the data as a table.
2. Insert a PivotTable and place Lineitem sku or Lineitem name in Rows.
3. Add Line revenue and Lineitem quantity to Values, both summarized as Sum.
4. Sort the PivotTable by Line revenue to see your top sellers for the period.

Keep a few limits in mind when interpreting the numbers. The Line revenue calculation doesn’t subtract discounts or refunds, and the Discount Code column doesn’t include automatic discounts. The export also reflects what was true when each order was placed, not your current product details.

For summaries Shopify already calculates, such as sales by channel or taxes, export a report instead. Open Analytics > Reports, choose a report, click the menu icon and select Export, picking CSV if offered. You can then build your own charts or combine several reports in one workbook.

When to Use an Excel Add-In or App Instead of CSV Files

CSV files work well for occasional edits and monthly analysis. However, the manual export, edit and import cycle becomes tedious when you update the same data every week or need numbers that stay current. That’s the point where a direct connection or a dedicated import tool starts to pay off.

Excel add-ins for Shopify connect a workbook to your store through Shopify’s API. Typically, you load objects such as products, orders or customers into a worksheet, refresh them with one click and, in edit mode, commit changes back to the store. Setup usually means creating API credentials in your Shopify admin and pasting an access token into the add-in.

That convenience comes with responsibility. Changes you commit from a connected workbook affect your live store immediately, so review edits as carefully as you would an overwrite import. Also check which permissions the access token grants, which Excel versions and operating systems the add-in supports, and its pricing, since many are paid tools.

If you’d rather keep working with spreadsheet files but repeat imports without rebuilding Shopify’s template each time, Bulkflow is another option. It supports bulk import, export, field mapping and scheduled data updates for Shopify, so a recurring spreadsheet update can follow the same column mapping every time.

Conclusion

Excel for Shopify comes down to moving data out of your store, working on it where spreadsheets shine and bringing back only what Shopify can import safely. With the right export options and a little care in how you open and save files, Excel becomes a reliable tool for both bulk updates and sales analysis. We hope this guide helps you get more out of your Shopify data in Excel. If spreadsheet updates are becoming a regular part of running your store, you can explore Bulkflow.