How to add a product category in Shopify

The product category field in Shopify is becoming increasingly important for organizing your products, as well as for tax and analytics purposes. The Mixtable Excel-like spreadsheet app simplifies the process of adding product categories to your Shopify products, individually or in bulk.

Load product categories into the spreadsheet

1. Set up a spreadsheet and worksheet: First, set up a spreadsheet and create a worksheet that syncs the products whose categories you’ll be editing, such as a Products (no variants) or Products (with variants) worksheet

2. Add a Shopify data column: Click ＋ Shopify data in the header row of an empty column, or choose Column > Add Shopify data… from the menu bar. The field picker opens and asks What should column E show?, with your column’s letter in place of E

3. Choose a category field: Type “category” in the search box to find the category fields. Click the one you want, then click Save Column:

   • Category (in the Organization section): the “short” name for the category, for example “Kitchen & Dining Benches”
   • Category path (in the Organization section): the “full” name for the category, for example “Furniture > Benches > Kitchen & Dining Benches”
   • Category ID (in the IDs & dates section): Shopify’s ID for the category in its standard product taxonomy, for example gid://shopify/TaxonomyCategory/fr-3-1

   On a Products (with variants) worksheet, the same three fields are marked Product, because a category belongs to the product rather than to each variant

4. Populate existing categories: The column will now populate with any existing product category data for your Shopify products

Add a category to a product

To add a product category to a Shopify product using Mixtable, follow these steps:

1. Locate the product row. Find the row that displays the product in question

2. Identify the category cell. Locate the cell in that row corresponding to the category column you previously added

3. Manually set the category value, or use the Change button

   • Manual entry: Type a valid Shopify category value directly into the cell. You can also copy and paste the value
   • Using the Change button: Click the Change button in the cell. A window opens with Shopify’s full list of product categories. Click through the categories to the one you want, select it, and click Save. The selected category then fills the cell. On a Products (with variants) worksheet, the window reminds you that this changes the category of the entire product

4. Sync the change to Shopify. Click Sync at the top right of the spreadsheet, review your changes in the preview that opens, then click Sync again

Remove a product category from a product

To remove a product category from a Shopify product simply find the cell showing the existing category for the product, and clear it. You can clear the cell by selecting it and using the Backspace/Delete button on your keyboard. When the cell is cleared, click Sync at the top right of the spreadsheet, review your changes in the preview that opens, then click Sync again. The product category will be removed from Shopify.

Change the product category of a product

To change an existing Shopify product category to something else follow the same process as when adding a product category. Find the cell showing the category you’d like to change, and either change the value manually or click the Change button. Then click Sync at the top right of the spreadsheet, check the preview that opens, and click Sync again to send the new category to Shopify.