How to Schedule Automatic Bulk Edits on WordPress Content

In this guide, we’ll show you how to schedule automatic bulk edits for WordPress content using the WP Sheet Editor – Automations add-on.

WP Sheet Editor is a suite of spreadsheet editors for WordPress. It is the most powerful bulk editor for WordPress posts, pages, WooCommerce products and any other custom post type and custom field.

To this suite of powerful tools for managing your WordPress content using intuitive spreadsheets, we have added the Automations add-on for WP Sheet Editor.

This add-on allows you to schedule automatic exports and imports, bulk edits and changes made in the cells of the spreadsheet.

In this tutorial, we’ll see first how to to edit content in any WP Sheet Editor spreadsheet and schedule the changes to be saved on a later date and time.

Then, we will see how to edit content with the Bulk Edit tool and schedule that bulk change to run at a future date and time.

Note: This tutorial assumes you’re using at least one of the WP Sheet Editor spreadsheets, except the frontend spreadsheet editor, since Automations works on the backend only.

For this example, we will use the WP Sheet Editor – WooCommerce Products spreadsheet, but you can apply the same steps using any other WP Sheet Editor spreadsheet.

Install and set up the WP Sheet Editor – Automations add-on

In addition to the WP Sheet Editor spreadsheet you are using to manage your content, you need to download and install the Automations add-on for WP Sheet Editor.

Click here to read a guide on how to install and set up the Automations add-on.

How to schedule cell changes to save later

First, let’s see how to schedule the saving of changes made in the cells for a future date and time.

This can have several uses:

• Changing images to some products at a specific date and time
• Changing prices to all selected products at a specific date and time
• Moving products from one category to another at a specific date and time
• And any other change you want to make to the cells of the spreadsheet.

In this example, we will edit the values in the Regular price column for some products and schedule the changes to be applied on a later date and time.

We need to go to the Regular price column and apply some changes.

Now we need to hover over the Save button and click on Save later.

You need to configure the save later job by using these fields in the Save later popup:

• Select the date and time: Use the date and time picker here.
• Notify this email address when the process finishes: You can enter several email addresses, separating them with commas. You’ll get an email with all the details when this job is completed.
• Select the recurrence for this save later job:
  • Run once: You can select this to apply this change once only.
  • Run in recurring intervals: If you select this option, you can schedule a recurring job to run every X minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months. For example, this is useful if you have added a math formula to decrease or increase prices, and you want that same formula to run in recurring intervals (e.g. increase prices every 3 months, every month, etc.)
• Name: You can add a name for this scheduled job.
• Click on Schedule the changes.

Once you have scheduled the job to save the changes on a future date and time, you can click on View scheduled changes to view this job on the Scheduled cell changes popup.

Below you can see that our cell changes have been scheduled to save later. Click here to understand the Scheduled jobs popup.

How to schedule automatic bulk edits on WordPress content

Scheduling bulk edits is a great way to automate your WordPress content management. You can increase your productivity by scheduling bulk edits that will run even if you’re not connected to your WordPress website.

In this example, we will schedule a 5% increase for the regular price of WooCommerce products every month.

We need to start by opening the Bulk Edit tool.

Now we need to configure this scheduled bulk edit by using the following fields:

• Select the rows that you want to update: We have three options here:
  • Edit all the rows from my current search: Select this if you want to edit the rows from a specific search or all the rows in the spreadsheet.
  • I want to search the rows to update and edit all the search results: This will open the Search tool, where you can use any field as a search filter.
  • Edit the rows that I selected manually in the spreadsheet: Right next to the ID column in the spreadsheet, you can use the checkbox picker to manually select specific rows to bulk edit them.
• What field do you want to edit: You can edit any field, but in this example we’ll select the Regular price field.
• Select type of edit: In this example, we’ll select the Increase by percentage option.
• Increase by: In this example, we’ll increase 5% monthly.

Now we need to tick the Run this in the future checkbox and select the following values:

• Select the date and time: Use the date and time picker here.
• Notify this email address when the process finishes: You can enter several email addresses, separating them with commas. You’ll get an email with all the details when this job is completed.
• Select the recurrence for this save later job:
  • Run once: You can select this to apply this change once only.
  • Run in recurring intervals: If you select this option, you can schedule a recurring job to run every X minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months. This is useful if you have added a math formula to decrease or increase prices, for example, and you want that same formula to run in recurring intervals. For example, increase prices every 3 months, every month, etc.
  • Since in this example we’ll select the Run in recurring intervals option, we need to add the recurrence in Run every and select the time unit. We’ll increase the prices by 5% every month.
• Name: You can add a name for this job.
• Click on Execute Now.

You’ll see the View scheduled bulk edits link.

Below you can see that our cell changes have been scheduled to save later.

The Scheduled jobs popup will allow you to:

• View the scheduled job details:
  • Name
  • Status
  • Recurrence
  • Date created
  • Previus run
  • Next run
• View and download the scheduled job’s log
• Manually run the scheduled task
• Pause scheduled tasks
• Cancel scheduled tasks
• Edit scheduled tasks
• Archive scheduled tasks
• Delete scheduled tasks

Click here to understand the Scheduled jobs popup.

Advanced settings for the Automations add-on

We have prepared a guide where you can understand the advanced settings for the Automations add-on for WP Sheet Editor.

Click here to read the guide.

This is how you can schedule cell changes and bulk edits to be run later using the Automations add-on for WP Sheet Editor.