WooCommerce – How to Bulk Edit Downloadable Files

Let’s see how to bulk edit download files on your WooCommerce downloadable products.

Sometimes you sell digital products with music or video files, or you have physical products that contain PDF manuals.

For example, you can sell “hardware tools” and all the wrenches might have the same user manual, or all the recipe books might include the same PDF as a gift.

So you’re editing a lot of downloadable products, and you need to update the file URLs quickly.

How do you do it? Do you go product by product, editing each file? Or do you know another way to do it?

In this article, we’ll show you how to bulk edit downloadable files using a spreadsheet.

Install the WP Sheet Editor Products Spreadsheet plugin

WP Sheet Editor provides a Products Spreadsheet where you can see all the product information, and you can edit freely.

You can skip this step if you already have the plugin installed and activated.

Once you install the plugin and activate your license, follow the steps in the sections below in order to bulk update download files.

Open the products spreadsheet

Go to WP Sheet Editor > Edit products. You’ll see all your WooCommerce products on the spreadsheet.

Edit download files individually using the spreadsheet

One way to save a lot of time in managing WooCommerce downloadable products is to use the spreadsheet.

To do this, we recommend that you filter all downloadable products, using the Search tool.

This tool allows you to search for products using any field (column) as search criteria.

In this example, we are going to search for all downloadable products in the “Wallpapers” category.

You just have to select these values in the Search tool:

• Enter product categories: Enter the category here.
• Tick the Enable advanced filters checkbox and select these values to filter the downloadable products:
  • Field: Downloadable
  • Operator: =
  • Value: Yes
• Click on Run search.

Once you run the search, you’ll see all the downloadable that belong in the selected category displayed on the spreadsheet.

You’ll also see the active search filters displayed above the products’ data.

Now move to the Download files column.

You can click on Edit files to open the download files manager on any product.

It will open a popup with a spreadsheet containing the Name and the File (url or path) columns.

You can change download file names or URLs, and when you’re done, you can click on Save changes.

Bulk edit download files on hundreds of products

If you do not want to edit the download files in individual products, you can edit them in bulk, using the Bulk Edit tool.

It allows you to bulk edit any field on hundreds or thousands of products.

Select the products you’ll bulk edit

The first thing to do is to select the products in which we want to edit the download files.

To do this, you have at least two options: Filter downloadable products or select them manually.

Option: Search for products to bulk update

Open the Search tool.

In this example, we are going to search for all downloadable products in the “Wallpapers” category.

You just have to select these values in the Search tool:

• Enter product categories: Enter the category here.
• Tick the Enable advanced filters checkbox and select these values to filter the downloadable products:
  • Field: Downloadable
  • Operator: =
  • Value: Yes
• Click on Run search.

You’ll see all the products matching the search criteria displayed on the spreadsheet.

Option: Select products manually

You can use the checkbox selector to pick specific products to bulk edit them.

Bulk edit download files

After searching or selecting the downloadable products you’ll update, you need to open the Bulk Edit tool.

Option: Add download files to existing products in bulk

If you want to add a new download file to existing products, you can append the file URL to the existing URLs.

To do this, you need to select the following values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: You can select any of these values:
  • Edit all the rows from my current search (including non-visible rows)
  • Edit all the rows that I selected manually in the spreadsheet
• What field do you want to edit: Download files
• Select type of edit: Append
• Enter the value to append to the existing value: The plugin will append the new file to the existing files in the products. Here you can enter file URLs only; you can enter multiple URLs separated by commas.
• Select the Edit only parent products option.
• Click on Execute Now.

Option: Replace specific download files

If you want to replace any specific download file on your products, you need to select the following values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: You can select any of these values:
  • Edit all the rows from my current search (including non-visible rows)
  • Edit all the rows that I selected manually in the spreadsheet
• What field do you want to edit: Download files
• Select type of edit: Replace
• Replace this: Enter the URL of the file you want to remove.
• With this: Enter the URL of the file you want to add.
• Select the Edit only parent products option.
• Click on Execute Now.

Option: Remove specific download files

If you want to remove any specific download file from your products, you need to select the following values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: You can select any of these values:
  • Edit all the rows from my current search (including non-visible rows)
  • Edit all the rows that I selected manually in the spreadsheet
• What field do you want to edit: Download files
• Select type of edit: Replace
• Replace this: Enter the URL of the file you want to remove.
• With this: Leave this field empty.
• Select the Edit only parent products option.
• Click on Execute Now.

This is how you can easily bulk edit downloadable files on your WooCommerce products.