Change product positions in Automated Collections (Smart Collections)

It is possible to export and import the Product Positions for Shopify Smart Collections (Automated Collections). Use that to see which products are located in which Smart Collections, and at what positions. Also you can change the product positions inside the Smart Collections by doing an import.

Steps in short to change product positions in Automated Collections (Smart Collections):

1. Export Product Positions for Automated Collections.
2. Edit Exported file changing the Product: Position column value.
3. Import back into Matrixify.

1. Export Product Positions for Automated Collections

First you must go to Matrixify App and Export “Smart Collections” with their linked Products. To do this, go to the Matrixify app, select “New Export” and from the “Select Sheets” drop-down select to Export “Smart Collections”. Then check the checkboxes for “Basic Columns” and “Linked Products”. Your Export set up should look something like this:

You can also add filters to the Export to Export only specific Smart Collections from your store.

Once you have everything set up, you can go ahead and press “Export”. When the Export has finished, download the Exported file by pressing the “Download Exported File” button.

2. Edit the Exported file

In the exported file you should see the following columns:

• Product: ID
• Product: Handle
• Product: Position

Here you can see which products currently exist for which Automated (Smart) Collections, and what is their position in the collection.

If the position is empty it means that it doesn’t have the “Sort Order” set to “Manual”. To sort Product Positions in a Smart Collection, the “Sort Order” must be “Manual”. If the Smart Collection has a different value for this column in the Exported file, you can add the value in the “Sort Order” column to “Manual” to then be able to sort the positions of the Products.

To change only the product positions in the “Product: Position” column and nothing else. You do not require all column in the file for this Import. The only columns you should keep in your Import file are:

• ID
• Handle
• Product: ID
• Product: Handle
• Product: Position

If changing the Sort Order of the collection remember to set the “Sort Order” to “Manual” and also include that column in your Import file.

If you just need to change some positions of some products, you can import just those product positions with Smart Collections. No need to list all of the products of that collection. For example, if you need to just move the certain product to the 1st position – import just the row of that one product position for that collection.

Before importing make sure that you have the sheet name correct so the app understands what you are importing:

• For the CSV file, the file name needs to contain words “Smart Collections”, for example, “Shopify-smart-collections.csv”
• For the XLSX file, the sheet/tab name in the file needs to be “Smart Collections”. The file name for XLSX file does not matter as you can have multiple sheets per file.

Once all changes have been made, save the file and you are ready to Import!

3. Import Product Positions for Automated Collections

Take your saved file and Import it into the app in the “Import” section. The app will then upload your file and analyse it. Make sure that the app has correctly recognised the amount of Smart Collections you are Importing and that it has recognised your Import as a Smart Collections Import.

If all looks correct, you can press “Import”. The app will then start Importing your Smart Collections and changing the Product positions within the collection to the Product positions you have set in your Import file.

Once the Import has finished, you can download the “Import Results File” if any errors have occurred and check them in the “Import Results” and “Import Comment” columns of the Import Results file.

Now you can enjoy your updated Smart Collections!

Will it sort the products in the collection when copying from one store to another?

Yes, it will.

But sometimes, if it takes longer for Shopify to re-calculate the products for the Smart Collection, the app will not be able to set that sort order – actually, it will complain that there are no such product found in the collection.

If you have such an issue, just count to 5 and import the same Smart Collections file again – if Shopify will have calculated its automated collection, then that import will sort products in it.

Where to go from here?

• Read the full documentation about all the Shopify Smart (automated) Collection sheet columns.