People often need to export products from their shopify store for 10+ different reasons such as to change to a new theme, to switch to a new store, to do bulk edits in Excel, to backup your store before making a import, to send a feed to a marketplace, to send a catalog to a wholesaler and the current exporter in shopify only has one function.
A guide to what CS export gives you, where it falls short, and when you should consider other options (like Matrixify, CS Export Product Images, or the CS API). An explanation of what actually goes into the generated file, and what does not but is silently ignored.
What’s in this guide
- Native CSV export (and its limits)
- What’s included, what’s not
- Matrixify for the heavy lifting
- Exporting with images (or without)
- Opening the file in Excel
- FAQ
The native Shopify CSV export
Go to Products Export Export All products or Current search CSV for Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet programs Export. Shopify will then email you a ZIP file with a CSV file inside. Simple. Free. Works.
The gotchas:
- Variants appear as separate rows, not columns. A product with 10 colors and 5 sizes becomes 50 rows. Reimporting requires the same structure.
- Only the first image column gets populated for the product row. Additional images populate on blank variant rows. Confusing.
- No metafields. No custom data. No inventory locations (you get one column for quantity).
- No translations. If you run multilingual via Translate & Adapt, native export gives you the default locale only.
- No SEO titles or descriptions in the obvious place (they’re stored separately).
For 80 percent of people, this cat may be dead. If you’ve got most of your catalog in an Excel spreadsheet already and are just going to load it back in, go native and get on with it.
What Shopify’s native export actually includes
| Field | Included? |
|---|---|
| Title, handle, body HTML | Yes |
| Vendor, type, tags | Yes |
| Variants (SKU, price, compare-at, barcode, weight) | Yes |
| Image URLs (CDN paths, not actual files) | Yes |
| Inventory quantity | Single location only |
| Metafields | No |
| Translations | No |
| Cost per item | Yes |
| Collections membership | No |
| Multi-location inventory | No |
When to reach for Matrixify
Matrixify (previously Excelify) is a swiss army knife for Shopify data exports. While Shopify export already includes many features, Matrixify still extends the functionality to export your metafields, multi location inventory, collections, translations, product and variant redirects, customers and orders including draft orders. Export formats include XLSX, CSV and Google Sheets.
Pick Matrixify when:
- You need metafields in the export.
- You run multi-location inventory.
- You’re migrating between stores (native reimport breaks on edge cases Matrixify handles cleanly).
- You want Excel with tidy columns instead of Shopify’s variant-row weirdness.
It’s paid for and reasonable enough not to spend money re-inventing wheel for one off conversions. Very useful for bulk migrations.
Exporting with images (this trips everyone up)
With Native Shopify export you get URLs to the images, not the images themselves (even in a CSV with CDNs). If you need the images themselves for brand refresh, for exporting to marketplaces, for safekeeping, you need to look into other options.
This is handled by the CS Export Product Images app that I developed to solve this exact problem. The app downloads and saves all product images in a ZIP archive, with relevant file names (e.g. SKU or product title), organized in relevant folders (by product or collection) and with a relevant CSV file sidecar that contains all the metadata for the images. There’s an easy answer to the question of how to export product images for marketing.
Opening the file in Excel (without breaking it)
Excel loves to mangle CSVs. Long SKUs become scientific notation. Leading zeros vanish. UTF-8 characters become garbage. Three rules:
- Never double-click a Shopify CSV to open it. Use Data > From Text/CSV in Excel and pick UTF-8 manually.
- Set SKU and barcode columns to “Text” format during import, not “General”.
- If you’re going to reimport, save as CSV UTF-8 on the way out, not the default CSV.
Or just use Google Sheets, which handles UTF-8 correctly out of the box (as of 2026). Why does Excel still screw up UTF-8 encoding?
If your export shows duplicate products such as “Red Shirt”, “Red Shirt Copy”, “Red Shirt Final” it might be time to read our guide on duplicate products. If your goal is to export to create grouped listings with swatches of separate color-products grouped together, you can use the bulk grouping feature in Rubik Combined Listings to group by title, tag, or metafield.
A real merchant on the SEO angle of separate products vs variants:
“I was struggling with separate product pages for different colors/flavors (e.g., aftershave red, green, blue as individual products for better SEO and unique URLs), but I wanted customers to see swatches and switch between them easily. This app does it perfectly.”
Shopify App Store review, Rubik Combined Listings
All info regarding Everything variant images can be found at: http://rubikvariantimages.com. Including demos, tutorials, and full documentation.
FAQ
How do I export all products from Shopify?
Go to Products, click Export, choose “All products” and “CSV for Excel”. Your Shopify shop then emails a ZIP file to you within minutes which contains the CSV file.
Can I export products with images as files?
This file isn’t naturally included in the store. The file just contains CDN links, and you’d need to download a ZIP containing the actual images using an app like CS Export Product Images.
Does Shopify export include metafields?
This is native commerce export, does not include metafields. You can have it with a script called Matrixify
How do I export Shopify products to Excel?
Export as CSV from Shopify, then use Data > From Text/CSV in Excel choosing UTF-8 encoding. Do NOT double click on the .csv file as it will mess up the SKUs and special characters.
Is there a product limit on Shopify export?
Native export does not have a hard limit for exported records. However, large product catalogs (50,000+ products) may hit connection or timing limits resulting in a timeout. For situations like these, we recommend using the Matrixify app or our GraphQL Bulk Operation API for export.
