How to Import Products from Excel (XLSX) into WooCommerce

Do you have a huge list of products in Excel and wondering how to import those to WooCommerce? 

If yes, then we feel your pain. It can become really tedious when you have hundreds, maybe thousands of products to import with a tight deadline. If you are to do this task manually, it will take forever. While Excel is a great tool to compile your product data, you really need a solution to automatically import the products from your Excel spreadsheet. 

In this article, we are going to provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to import products from Excel to your WooCommerce store with a very powerful tool. With WP All Import, you can import thousands of products from your Excel spreadsheet in minutes. 

Limitations of WooCommerce’s Built-in Importer

You may wonder why we don’t recommend the built-in importer WooCommerce comes with. Well, it’s just not as powerful and convenient. 

The default product importer in WooCommerce lacks some crucial features. For example, it only supports CSV files. That means, if you have an Excel (.XLSX or .XLS) file, you are out of luck. 

It doesn’t support images from external sources either. It makes the process time-consuming, as you need to already have the images in the WordPress media library before you start importing your products. 

WooCommerce’s import-export suite doesn’t work well with custom fields either. It does support variable products, but the process may seem confusing to many users. 

This is why you need to choose the right plugin for importing your products from Excel to WooCommerce.

Choosing the Right Plugin for Excel to WooCommerce Product Import 

It is crucial to choose a good plugin to make your product import process hassle-free. There are quite a few WooCommerce product import plugins that support Excel files, and WP All Import is the best in the bunch.

We prefer WP All Import over the other tools due to its ease of use and flexibility. The Automatic Setup feature reads the uploaded spreadsheet, figures out what each column holds, and assembles the product mapping without any manual input. Clean supplier files go from upload to finished import in moments. Anyone who prefers to verify the work can open the drag-and-drop editor and adjust fields as needed. You can also schedule your imports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis with this highly capable product import plugin. 

Here are the key features of WP All Import: 

• Supports importing product data from Excel, CSV, XML, and Google Sheets. 
• Maps Excel columns to product fields on its own through Automatic Setup.
• Powerful filtering options to select which products you want to import. 
• Can handle very large files and any file structure.
• Fully compatible with custom plugins and theme fields. 
• Capable of handling variable products with ease. 
• Comes with powerful import scheduling options.
• Can manipulate product field data using PHP functions.

We’ll be using WP All Import to import products from your Excel file to WooCommerce, as it’s the most efficient tool. In the following section, we’ll provide you with a step-by-step guide. 

Step-by-Step: Import Products from Excel to WooCommerce

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know to import products to your WooCommerce store from Excel files using WP All Import. Starting from plugin installation, we’ll guide you through the entire flow: uploading the file, letting WP All Import handle the mapping, checking the results, and publishing.

Let’s start! 

1. Installing and Activating WP All Import

To import products to your WooCommerce store, you need to install WP All Import. 

First, you need to purchase the Import Pro Package, which costs $199/yr and comes with unlimited installs. It comes with the WooCommerce Import Add-On, which will allow you to import products to your store, including variable products.

After making your purchase, download the latest version of the plugin from WP All Import’s customer portal.  

Now it’s time to install the plugin to WordPress. Log in to WordPress and go to Plugins › Add New. Select Upload Plugin and upload the ZIP file you just downloaded. Then simply click on the Install Now button. Activate the plugin, and you can start importing! 

2. Starting the Product Import Process and Uploading Your Excel File

To start the import process, you need to upload your Excel file to WP All Import. 

In the main WordPress menu, navigate to All Import › New Import. 

You’ll notice a banner at the top of this screen called Set up automatically, and it’s the quickest way to get your import ready. Click on it, and the Automatic Setup wizard opens up.

Step 1 asks for your product import file. You can upload it from your computer, grab it from a URL, pick a file you’ve used before, or pull it from an FTP/SFTP server. Go ahead and upload your product import Excel file here; files up to 256 MB are supported.

Step 2 asks what we’re importing. Simply select WooCommerce, then Products. This one choice covers simple, variable, and grouped products, so there’s no need to worry about product types at this stage.

There’s also an optional Add Setup Instructions field where you can leave a note for anything unusual in your file, like prices in a different currency or categories separated by pipes.

Now simply click Start Automatic Setup and watch WP All Import do its thing. A progress screen shows what’s happening behind the scenes.

When it’s done, you’ll get a summary showing how many fields were mapped, a confidence score, and the number of records ready to import.

Scroll down to the Field Mappings section if you want to see exactly how each column is connected.

If everything in the summary looks right, you can run the import right away. But it’s always a good idea to give the mapping a quick look over first, and the Review Import Configuration button lets you do exactly that. Click it, and WP All Import opens the template editor with every field already filled in from your Excel file. Nothing here needs building from scratch; you’re simply checking the connections Automatic Setup made.

3. Reviewing the Auto-Mapped Product Data From Excel

You’ll now find yourself on the Drag & Drop screen, where the import template lives. Since Automatic Setup has already done the heavy lifting, every panel comes pre-filled with the matching columns from your Excel file, and most imports won’t need a single change.

That said, it’s worth a quick scroll through the sections below to confirm the mapping matches your data. If something needs adjusting, drag a different element from the right panel into the field on the left, or edit the XPath directly.

Now we’ll look at the different panels that hold the WooCommerce product information.

Title and Description Section

The Title and Description section is pretty much self-explanatory. Automatic Setup maps the product names, descriptions, and short descriptions here, so just confirm the right columns landed in the right fields.

Then comes the most important part of the mapping. Below the Title and Description section, you’ll find the WooCommerce Add-On section.

WooCommerce Add-On Section

Expand the WooCommerce Add-On section next.

This is the section where the Product Type is defined. Automatic Setup detects it from your file, but you can always change it to grouped, external, or variable products, or set your preferred product type with XPath.

Below Product Type, you’ll find several tabs to configure your import. We’ll describe some of the most frequently used tabs.

The General Tab is selected by default. It includes general product information such as SKU, sale price, regular price, tax status, and more.

The Inventory tab includes the settings related to stock availability. 

The Attributes tab lets you add different attributes like color, size, shape, etc. 

The other tabs let you configure shipping, linked products, and advanced settings.

If you want to learn how to configure the WooCommerce Add-On for variable products, we have a separate article on importing variable products to WooCommerce. 

Images Section

The Images section lets you set up how you want to import the product images. Automatic Setup maps image columns from your file automatically, but you can adjust the sources here if needed. You can import images from multiple sources: images hosted elsewhere, images currently in the Media Library, and images currently uploaded in wp-contents/uploads/wpallimport/files/.

Among the other sections, Custom Fields is noteworthy. With WP All Import, you can import custom fields to any theme or plugin, including WooCommerce. Automatic Setup maps the detected fields on its own, so this section is mainly for fine-tuning.

Once everything checks out, click Continue to Import Settings at the bottom of the screen.

Before moving to the next step, you can also click Preview to see how your Excel product data fills real product pages, images and pricing included. Spotting a problem here beats discovering it on the live store after publishing.

4. Configuring Other Product Import Settings

Clicking Continue to Import Settings brings you to the Import Settings screen. Most of the defaults here are ready to go as-is, especially since Automatic Setup has already chosen a unique identifier for your products behind the scenes. Still, it’s worth understanding the first panel, because it decides how your import treats the products in your store.

Configure How WP All Import Will Handle Products Matching

The first run of your import creates a new WooCommerce product for every record in your Excel file, which is the default option. The magic happens when you re-run the same import later: WP All Import uses the unique identifier it selected during Automatic Setup to update those same products instead of creating duplicates.

If you’re importing into a store that already has products, the second option, Attempt to match to existing WooCommerce products before creating new ones, is the one you want. It matches records against the products already in your store instead of adding everything as new.

Below the options, you can fine-tune what happens when the import finds new or changed data. By default, WP All Import creates products from newly present records, updates existing products with changed data, and skips products whose data hasn’t changed, which keeps repeat imports fast. You can also switch to updating all data or choosing exactly which product fields gets updated. The final checkbox, Remove or modify WooCommerce products that are not present in this import file, is a powerful one as you can use it when your Excel file is the complete source of truth and products missing from the file should be removed or modified. Leave it off if the file only covers part of your catalog.

Email Notifications for Customers

If your store sends customers emails for things like account creation, the Block email notifications during import checkbox keeps those emails from going out mid-import. It’s enabled by default, and for bulk imports, you should leave it that way.

Scheduling Options

The Scheduling Options panel lets your import run automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. We cover it in detail in the advanced section below, so feel free to skip it for now.

Configure Advanced Settings

The last panel handles how WP All Import processes your file under the hood. The Import Speed Optimization settings control how many records get processed in each iteration (20 by default) and whether large files get split into 1,000-record chunks, which they should. Unless your import is timing out or crawling on a slow host, the defaults will serve you fine.

One more thing worth a click: check the Friendly Name field at the bottom and give your import a name you’ll recognize later. You’ll thank yourself the next time you’re hunting for this import in Manage Imports.

Click Continue when you’re ready to run the import.

5. Running Product Import and Verifying Results

You’ll see the Confirm and Run screen. This is the final step of the product import process. Here, WP All Import will display a summary of the import you are about to run.

Click Confirm & Run Import to start the import. When the import is done, WP All Import will show you a summary of the new products that have been created, or if any of the existing products got updated. You’ll also be able to see the number of skipped products in case your Excel file has any missing information.

To review if your products were imported properly, go to Products › All Products in the WordPress menu. You should check the product data tab of some products at random to confirm the import. If anything looks off, you can always head back Manage Imports page and run the import again.

There you go! You imported products from Excel to WooCommerce successfully!

Advanced WooCommerce Product Import Features

WP All Import includes tons of advanced features to customize your product import from Excel. With these advanced features, you can automatically schedule your imports, filter which products get imported, handle variable products, import custom fields and product attributes, and more.

Let’s take a look at some of the advanced features that WP All Import offers. 

Applying Filters to Your WooCommerce Product Import Excel File

Automatic Setup imports every record in your Excel file by default, which is exactly what you want most of the time. But sometimes you only need a subset: products with valid images, items above a certain price, or everything except one category. This is where WP All Import’s powerful filtering process comes in handy.

You’ll find the filtering screen right from the template editor. When you’re reviewing the auto-mapped fields (Step 3), scroll to the bottom and click Back to Create Filters. This takes you to the Review Import File Screen, which shows the number of products you are going to import and displays the data in a table. This allows you to check if the data you uploaded is correct.

Let’s see how to apply filtering rules. 

Step 1: Select an Import Element

First, you need to select the column based on which you want to filter the products. Let’s take the following example, where we want to import products with valid images. 

Step 2: Add a Filter Rule

You need to set up filtering rules to import the exact products you want. You can do this in the Rule selection box. For our example, we’ll select is not empty. This means that we’ll import products where the Image_URL element has data. 

For most filters, you need to specify a Value. For example, if you want to filter products that cost more than $50, you need to choose greater than in the Rule selection box and put 50 in the Value field. 

For our example, a Value is not needed. 

Click the Add Rule button. 

Step 3: Apply Filters to XPath

The filter you created will then appear in the lower section. Click Apply Filters to XPath to apply the filter. 

Your filter will then be applied to your import. 

WP All Import allows you to add more than one filter rule. For multiple filter rules, you need to connect them using the logical operators AND(&&) and OR(||). 

The AND(&&) operator filters out the products that satisfy both rules, and the OR(II) operator filters out the elements that satisfy either of the rules. 

Here’s an example where we filtered products with images that cost more than 50. 

Automating Your WooCommerce Product Imports

With WP All Import, you can schedule product imports to WooCommerce on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. 

This requires you to additionally purchase Automatic Scheduling, which costs $19/month for unlimited sites. 

If you don’t want to pay extra money, you can use cron jobs to schedule imports for free. However, this option is more suitable for a bit more advanced users. 

Schedule import doesn’t work for Excel files stored on your computer. For this, you’ll need to create a product import that uses a URL or FTP/SFTP site as the data source. The easy way is to upload your Excel file to Google Drive and add the public link in the first step of the import. 

To enable automatic recurring import, navigate to the Import Settings screen and click Scheduling Options. You will then see the following window. 

Select the days of the week you want the automatic import to run. You can also schedule your imports on a monthly basis. Next, select the time and timezone you want the import to run. And, that’s it! The scheduling is all set to run the day and time you specified.

Learn more about how to automatically import products into WooCommerce. 

Importing Custom Fields and Product Attributes

WP All Import can help you import custom fields and product attributes. 

To import custom fields, you need to expand the Custom Fields section in the Drag & Drop screen and click the See Detected Fields button. 

From here, you can map the relevant import data elements to their corresponding custom fields, if applicable.

For details, read How to Import Custom Fields to WooCommerce Products.

To import product attributes, go to the Attributes tab of the WooCommerce Add-On section. Then use the Add Attribute link to create one attribute for every attribute that you intend to import. An attribute consists of two fields: Name and Values.

Provide the names and values for each attribute, and simply set the options for each attribute. 

Creating names and values for each attribute is fairly simple. Just enter the name of the attribute in the Name field, and drag and drop the suitable incoming data element into the Values field. 

If you need to import data for an attribute that already exists in your store, make sure the name exactly matches the name or slug of the existing attribute.

To learn more, read How to Import Product Attributes in WooCommerce.

Importing Variable Products in Excel Imports

Importing variable products can be a bit tricky, as you would ideally want to import multiple variations of the same product without messing things up. With WP All Import, importing variable products from Excel files is quite easy. 

Automatic Setup usually detects variable products from your file on its own, so this part is mostly done for you. To double-check, open the template editor and go to WooCommerce Add-On to confirm Variable Product is selected as your Product Type.

Go to the Variations tab to link multiple product versions together to form a variable product. 

Variable products have single parent products with multiple child variations. 

For example, a T-shirt might have three color variations- Red, Green, and Blue. You can import Excel files that include parent products along with their child variations. 

With the Variations tab, you can specify how multiple product variations group into a single variable product. Automatic Setup analyzes the matching method during setup, so the correct option here is usually selected already based on your Excel file.

Let’s take the following example: 

There are two parent products with two variations each. The Excel file contains the parent products as well as the variations. 

The variations are grouped with the parent products through the SKU and Parent SKU columns. Using the Parent SKU column, WP All Import can assign the variations to the parent product with an SKU that matches the variations’ Parent SKU. 

Apart from Parent SKU, you can group variations through unique identifiers, product titles, and even child XML elements. WP All Import offers multiple options depending on how the parent-child relationship is structured in your import file. 

In some cases, WP All Import will automatically create parent products. For example, if you have different product variations with the exact same product title, WP All Import will group all these variations and automatically create a parent product. 

Read this detailed guide on how to import variable products into WooCommerce. 

Conclusion: Import Products from Excel to Woocommerce

Being able to import WooCommerce products from Excel files without any trouble helps e-commerce store owners a lot. With WP All Import, your product import experience will be convenient and fast. 

WP All Import is one of the best plugins for WooCommerce product import, as most traditional import plugins only support CSV. WP All Import helps you avoid the hassle of converting your Excel file to CSV. 

WP All Import is an affordable, effective solution to all your data import needs. Download WP All Import today! 

Import WooCommerce Products From Excel – FAQs

How do I import products to WooCommerce from Excel? 

You can easily import products to WooCommerce from Excel with WP All Import. Here are the steps:

1. Go to All Import › New Import and click Set up automatically. Upload your Excel file and select WooCommerce Products.
2. Automatic Setup maps the data elements to the product fields for you.
3. Review the mapping in the template editor if needed, then configure the Product Import Settings.
4. Run the Import and Verify the Imported Products.

How to bulk upload products to WooCommerce?

Bulk uploading products to WooCommerce is very easy with WP All Import. Here are the steps: 

1. Go to All Import › New Import, click Set up automatically, and select/upload your import file containing bulk product data. Choose WooCommerce Products.
2. Automatic Setup maps the data elements to the product fields for you.
3. Review the mapping in the template editor if needed, then configure the Product Import Settings.
4. Run the Import and Verify the Imported Products.

How to export and import products in WooCommerce?

You can export and import products in WooCommerce with capable plugins. WP All Import and WP All Export are the best plugins for exporting and importing WooCommerce products. 

How do I import products with custom fields in WooCommerce?

With WP All Import, you can easily import products with custom fields to WooCommerce. Here are the steps: 

1. Create a new WooCommerce product import and let Automatic Setup map your file.
2. In the template editor, expand the Custom Fields section and click the See Detected Fields button.
3. Review the auto-mapped custom fields and adjust any that need it.
4. Complete your import.