Publish and unpublish Shopify variants by sales channel

Mixtable Spreadsheet Editor lets you control sales-channel availability for individual Shopify variants. You can publish one variant to a channel while leaving another variant of the same product unpublished, then apply those changes across many products with a spreadsheet.

Variant availability and product availability work together. A variant can be purchased on a channel only when:

• The parent product is Active
• The parent product is published to that sales channel
• The individual variant is published to that sales channel

Setting a variant to true does not override an inactive or unpublished parent product.

Add product and variant sales-channel columns

Use a Products (with variants) worksheet because it has one row for each variant.

1. Open a Products (with variants) worksheet
2. To load new Shopify data, start by selecting an empty column — any column with a non-green header (green headers mean the column is already linked to Shopify data). Then, click the button in the column header to open the selection window to choose the data you want to pull in.
3. Select Variant sales channels
4. Choose the sales channel or catalog you want to control, then click Save Column
5. Add another column, select Product sales channels, and choose the same channel
6. Repeat these steps for any additional channels you want to manage

Mixtable labels the columns so their scope is clear:

• Variant: Online Store controls the individual variant
• Product: Online Store controls the parent product

The exact channel name depends on the channels, apps, Markets, and catalogs available in your Shopify store.

Publish or unpublish variants in bulk

1. In the Product: channel column, enter true for each parent product that should be available on that channel
2. In the matching Variant: channel column, enter true for variants that should be published and false for variants that should be unpublished
3. Copy, paste, or fill the values down to update more variants at once
4. Click Preview changes and review the pending product and variant updates
5. Click Sync to Shopify to publish the changes

For example, a product may have Small, Medium, and Large variants. You can leave the parent product published, set Small and Medium to true, and set Large to false for a particular channel.

Product and variant columns are different

• Product sales channels controls whether the parent product is published to a channel
• Variant sales channels controls whether each individual variant is published to that channel

If every variant should have the same availability, fill the same value down the Variant column. If availability differs by variant, set each row separately.

To manage product-level publishing without individual variant controls, see publish and unpublish Shopify products by sales channel.

Troubleshooting

A variant is set to true but is not available on the channel

Confirm that the parent product is Active and that the matching Product: channel column is also true. All three conditions must be met.

A sales channel is missing from the list

Confirm that the channel, app, Market, or catalog is available in Shopify. In the sales-channel selector, click Reload Sales Channels to refresh the list.

I changed values but Shopify did not update

Changes remain pending until you click Sync to Shopify. Open Preview changes first if you want to confirm the exact product and variant updates that will be sent.

You're ready!

Mixtable is an online spreadsheet designed to sync data with Shopify. It looks, feels, and behaves like Excel (including formulas), but runs in your browser. With Mixtable you can:

• Bulk add products to collections, edit metafields, add or remove tags;
• Change product prices, including international prices, and review price history;
• Manage customers with a spreadsheet CRM for Shopify;
• Use Excel features like sort ascending or descending, find-replace, filter, and more.

Best of all, you can sync changes back to Shopify with a single click. Find out more about the Mixtable suite of products here.