How to bulk cancel Orders on Shopify

In the Shopify Admin you cancel an Order by opening it and choosing “More actions” > “Cancel order”, where you pick the reason, refund, restock and notification options. This works for one Order at a time. When hundreds of unpaid or out of stock Orders need to be cancelled, it takes hours.
With Matrixify app you can bulk cancel Shopify Orders with one Import! You can Export your stores Orders, set the cancel columns and Import the file back. The same options as in the Shopify Admin are available as columns for bulk Imports.

Which Shopify Orders can be cancelled?

• Only Orders that are not fully fulfilled can be cancelled. Cancel the fulfillments first as explained in the bulk unfulfill Shopify Orders tutorial, or refund the items instead.
• A cancelled Order cannot be un-cancelled. Make sure to test with one Order first. To archive or unarchive Orders, follow this tutorial: Archive and Unarchive Shopify Orders in Bulk.
• Cancel or refund? Cancelling stops the Order. A refund only returns money, and the Order stays open. To refund only part of an Order, see the refund existing Shopify Orders in bulk tutorial.
• Orders with a Gift Card cannot be cancelled. Shopify fulfills Gift Card Line Items automatically, and that fulfillment cannot be cancelled, so the Import fails with “Cannot cancel an order that has outstanding fulfillments”. Refund such Orders instead.

Steps in short

1. Export the Orders you want to cancel, with only the ID, Name, Command and cancel columns.
2. Set Command to UPDATE and fill in the cancel date, reason, refund, restock, notification and note for each Order.
3. Import the file in the Matrixify app.
4. Check the cancelled Orders in the Shopify Admin.

1. Export Orders to cancel

In the Matrixify app Home – create a new Export by using the New Export button.

Use the Select Sheets dropdown and select Orders sheet. Click on the Orders sheet card to expand it, open the Basic Columns group, and select only these columns:

• ID, Name and Command – identify the Order.
• Cancelled At, Cancel: Reason, Cancel: Send Receipt, Cancel: Refund, Cancel: Restock and Cancel: Note – the cancel options.

Filter the Orders to cancel

In this example, we will cancel all Orders that are older than one month, are not paid and do not have any fulfilled items. Press the Filter button in the Orders sheet card and add these filters:

• Processed At – on or before – 2026-09-01.
• Payment Status – Pending.
• Fulfillment Status – Unfulfilled.

You can use any other filter instead, like Tags, Name or Line: SKU to Export only Orders that you need to cancel.

Press Export, wait for the Export to finish and download the exported file.

2. Set cancel options for Orders

Open the exported file. Each row is one Order. Fill in the columns:

• Command – set to UPDATE to tell the app that Order will be updated when importing. The Export has NEW there by default.
• Cancelled At – any date, for example 2026-10-01. A value here tells the app to cancel the Order. Shopify saves the time of the Import as the cancel time, not the date from the file.
• Cancel: Reason – one of customer, inventory, fraud, declined or other. If it is empty, the app will default to other.
• Cancel: Send Receipt – TRUE to send the cancellation email to the Customer. Empty or FALSE sends nothing.
• Cancel: Refund – TRUE to refund the whole paid amount. Empty or FALSE cancels the Order without a refund.
• Cancel: Restock – TRUE to return the items to inventory. Empty or FALSE does not restock.
• Cancel: Note – a staff note saved with the cancellation, for example Not paid within 30 days.

In our example, the Orders were never paid, so we set Cancel: Reason to other, Cancel: Restock to TRUE to return the reserved items to stock, and leave Cancel: Refund and Cancel: Send Receipt empty.

Note the defaults are different from the Shopify Admin. In Shopify Admin, restock and the Customer notification are selected by default. In the Import file, they are off unless you set them to TRUE.

Save the file.

3. Import to cancel Orders in bulk

In the Matrixify app Home page, upload the file in the Import section. Once the file is analyzed, make sure that the app detects the sheet as Orders and the Order count looks correct.

Press Import to start the Import.

4. Check cancelled Orders in Shopify Admin

When the Import is finished, the job status will be “Finished”. If some Orders failed, download the Import Results file and check the Import Comment column – it tells why the Order failed. Fix those rows and Import only them again.

In the Shopify Admin the Orders now show as cancelled. A paid Order cancelled with Cancel: Refund set to TRUE shows as refunded.

Good to know

• Read more about other Shopify limits on Shopify canceling orders manual.
• To remove Orders from the store completely instead of cancelling them, see the bulk delete Orders from Shopify tutorial.
• See all columns you can Export and Import in the Orders documentation.
• Contact Matrixify support if you have questions or concerns along the way.