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.

Here’s how to add a Product Category to your Shopify products using Mixtable:

1. Set up a Workbook and Worksheet: First, set up a workbook and create a worksheet that syncs the products whose categories you’ll be editing.

2. Locate an Unmapped Column: Right-click on the column header of a column that is not yet mapped to sync to a field. These columns have a grey background, while columns set up for data syncing have a light green background.

3. Access Shopify Sync Settings: After right-clicking, a context menu will appear. Select the “Shopify Sync Settings” option.

4. Choose the Product Category option: In the window that opens, select the “Product Category” radio button option. A dropdown will appear, prompting you to select the specific product category field you’d like to sync. You have three options here:

   • Product Category ID - This is the number representing a category in Shopify’s category list
   • Product Category Name - The “short” name for the category. E.g., “Kitchen & Dining Benches”
   • Product Category Full Name - The “full” name for the category. E.g., “Furniture > Benches > Kitchen & Dining Benches”

5. 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 “Product Category” column you previously created.

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 and a dialog will appear displaying a list of all valid Shopify product categories. Choose the desired category from the list and click the “Save” button. The selected category will then populate the cell.

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, start a Mixtable-to-Shopify sync and 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.