WooCommerce: Bulk Search and Replace SKUs in a Spreadsheet

Let’s see how to bulk search and replace WooCommerce SKUs using a spreadsheet on the WordPress admin dashboard.

This can be useful to replace specific SKUs in bulk, remove dashes from SKUs in bulk, remove any other symbols from your product SKUs in bulk, etc.

We will use the WP Sheet Editor – WooCommerce Products plugin. It allows you to view and manage your WooCommerce products in a spreadsheet on the wp-admin dashboard. This grid product editor allows you to:

• Run advanced searches using any field as a search parameter
• Bulk update thousands of products with a few clicks
• Duplicate products to create hundreds of copies
• Create variations in bulk and copy variations between products
• Export and import products using CSV files

In this case, the plugin will help us search and replace product SKUs in bulk.

After installing and activating the plugin, you need to follow the steps in the sections below to search and replace product SKUs in bulk.

Open the products’ spreadsheet

To open the products’ spreadsheet, you need to go to WP Sheet Editor > Edit products.

You’ll view all your products displayed on the spreadsheet.

Every row in the spreadsheet is a product and every column is a field.

If we scroll to the right in the spreadsheet, we will see the SKU column.

Now we’re ready to start searching and replacing product SKUs with WP Sheet Editor.

Below, we share with you some cool options you have to do this.

Option 1 – Search and replace SKUs manually

If you want to search and replace product SKUs manually, you can do it with a few clicks.

Unlike the normal WooCommerce editor, the spreadsheet allows you to search for products by SKU and quickly make changes in the corresponding cells.

First, let’s search for products using specific SKUs.

For this, we need to open the Search tool.

Now we will search for the products that have the following SKUs:

• 001-TEST
• 002-TEST
• 003-TEST
• 004-TEST

We can do this by ticking the Enable advanced filters checkbox and selecting the following values:

• Field: SKU
• Operator: Any of these values
• Value: Enter all the SKUs you want to find separating the with semicolons (;) like this: 001-TEST; 002-TEST; 003-TEST; 004-TEST

Once you have added the SKUs you want to find, you need to click on Run search.

After running the search, all the products that match the SKUs we added in the Search tool will be displayed on the spreadsheet.

You will see the active search filters displayed above the spreadsheet.

To replace these product SKUs using the spreadsheet, you just need to move to the SKU column, add the new SKUs, and click on Save.

It’s a great way to edit many products without having to open them one at a time.

Option 2 – Search and replace specific SKUs in bulk

Let’s put it this way: You want to remove a specific SKU from your products, but you don’t want to search for the products that contain it. You want to replace it directly with another SKU.

For this, you can open the Bulk Edit tool.

Now you need to select these values in the Bulk Edit tool:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search
• What field do you want to edit: SKU
• Select type of edit: Replace
• Replace this: Add the SKU you want to search and remove
• With this: Add the new SKU
• Click on Execute Now.

This is a great way to search and replace specific SKUs from your WooCommerce products.

Option 3 – Remove hyphens from product SKUs

If you want to remove hyphens from your product SKUs, you can do it with a few clicks.

Start by opening the Bulk Edit tool.

After that, you need to select these values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search
• What field do you want to edit: SKU
• Select type of edit: Replace
• Replace this: –
• With this: Leave this field empty.
• Click on Execute Now.

More options to bulk edit your product SKUs

You can use the Bulk Edit tool to make some other important changes to the product SKUs.

Here are some examples:

• Use the Remove everything after some text option to remove suffix from SKU.
• You can use the Remove everything before some text option to remove prefix from SKU.
• Use the Copy from other columns to replace all SKUs with the values from other columns. For example, you may have added a custom field for product code, and turn the product code into product SKU.
• You can use the Append option to add suffix to your SKUs.
• Use the Prepend option to add prefix to your SKUs.
• You can use the Capitalize words option to remove any lowercase letters from the SKUs.

As you can see, WP Sheet Editor makes it completely easy to bulk search & replace product SKU. You can also bulk edit any other fields on hundreds of products.