How to change 5,000 Shopify prices in ten minutes

Shopify's admin is built for editing one product at a time. That's fine until a supplier raises prices across a brand and you need to move 5,000 of them before the weekend. Here's the loop that takes ten minutes and, more importantly, is reversible.

1. Export only what you're changing

Filter the export to the vendor and take three columns: Handle, Title and Price. Title is only there so you can sanity-check what you're looking at — you'll delete it before importing.

2. Do the maths in the spreadsheet

Add a working column with your new price. For a 7% increase rounded to two decimals:

=ROUND(C2 * 1.07, 2)

Fill it down, then copy the whole column and paste it back over Price as values. Formulas are for working, values are for importing.

3. Trim the file

Delete the Title and working columns. You're left with Handle and Price — the identifier and the one field you changed. Everything you leave out stays exactly as it is in Shopify.

4. Preview, then run

Drop the file back into the app. The preview tells you how many products will be updated before anything is written. If that number is not the number you expected, stop and look at the file.

Keep the original export. If the change turns out wrong, importing that file puts the old prices back — the same loop, in reverse.

Why not a bulk editor?

Shopify's bulk editor is good for a screenful of products. Past that you're scrolling and hoping. A spreadsheet gives you formulas, find-and-replace, a second pair of eyes before you commit, and a file you can keep as a record of what changed.