How to Bulk Deactivate “Used for Variations” for WooCommerce Attributes

Learn how to activate or deactivate the “used for variations” option for all WooCommerce product attributes in bulk, saving you hours of manual data entry.

Imagine this scenario: Your client asks you to make a massive change to the thousands of products in their online store. They have decided to stop selling variable products and want to transition to simple products. To execute this catalog overhaul properly, the very first thing you need to do is deactivate the “Used for variations” option on all existing product attributes urgently.

Alternatively, perhaps a recent WooCommerce CSV import went wrong, and now hundreds of global or custom attributes are incorrectly checked as “Used for variations,” breaking your frontend product pages.

If you use the default WooCommerce interface, you already know this will take a massive amount of time because you are forced to edit products one by one. Just picture the tedious manual process:

1. Open a variable product from your WordPress dashboard.
2. Scroll down to the Product Data section and click on the Attributes tab.
3. Expand a specific attribute (like Color, Size, or Material).
4. Uncheck the “Used for variations” checkbox.
5. Repeat this unchecking process for every single attribute attached to that product.
6. Save the changes and wait for the page to reload.
7. Close the product, go back to your catalog, and open the next product.
8. Repeat the process as many times as necessary, potentially thousands of times.

It’s a tedious, boring, and highly inefficient process.

But we have great news! We will show you exactly how to disable or enable the “Used for variations” option for all your WooCommerce product attributes simultaneously. To do this, we will bypass the slow native editor and use an intuitive, powerful bulk editing spreadsheet.

The Solution: WP Sheet Editor for WooCommerce

We are talking about the WooCommerce Products Spreadsheet plugin. It displays your entire catalog in a fast, Excel-like spreadsheet, allowing you to view, filter, and edit any fields or metadata right there.

The best part is that you can perform advanced database queries and mass update thousands of products safely using the plugin’s built-in Search and Bulk Edit tools.

Once the plugin is installed and activated on your WordPress site, open the products spreadsheet by navigating to WP Sheet Editor > Edit Products.

Now, just follow these simple steps to uncheck the “Used for variations” option for all your product attributes.

1. Open the “Bulk Edit” Tool

This feature allows you to apply massive changes to hundreds of WooCommerce products. You can bulk edit product titles, stock status, short descriptions, categories, and even deep attribute settings without overloading your server.

Open the tool by clicking on the Bulk Edit button located on the plugin’s top toolbar.

2. Bulk Deactivate the “Used for Variations” Option

After opening the Bulk Edit popup, you need to configure the logic to target your product attributes. You have two highly flexible options depending on your store’s specific needs.

Option 1: Deactivate “Used for variations” for ALL attributes storewide

If you want to completely disable this setting across every single attribute (Color, Size, Material, etc.) for all products in your current view, set the following values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search (including non-visible rows). Note: You can use the Search tool first if you only want to apply this to a specific category.
• What field do you want to edit: Product attributes
• Select type of edit: Change attribute settings
• What settings do you want to change: Used for variations
• New value: No
• What attribute do you want to edit: All
• Click on the Execute now button to apply the mass update.

Option 2: Deactivate “Used for variations” for SPECIFIC attributes only

What if you only want to disable this setting for your “Color” attribute, but leave the “Size” attribute alone? You can easily target individual global taxonomies.

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search (including non-visible rows).
• What field do you want to edit: Product attributes
• Select type of edit: Change attribute settings
• What settings do you want to change: Used for variations
• New value: No
• What attribute do you want to edit: In this dropdown field, you can isolate specific attributes. For example, choose pa_color to disable product colors, or pa_size for product sizes. You have complete control over which attributes you deactivate.
• Click on the Execute now button to process the changes.

Optimize Your WooCommerce Attribute Management

It is as simple as that. You don’t need to spend hours clicking through individual product tabs or risk breaking your site with complex PHP snippets. By taking these two simple steps with WP Sheet Editor, you can easily activate or deactivate the “Used for variations” option for all your WooCommerce product attributes—or filter it down to very specific ones.