WooCommerce: How to Disable Out of Stock Variations

If you run a WooCommerce store with variable products, like different sizes or colors, you know how confusing it can be for customers when they see product options that are out of stock. It’s a good idea to hide or disable out of stock variations so that customers only see what they can actually buy. That’s why, in this tutorial, we’ll show you how to bulk disable out of stock variations in WooCommerce.

Disabling out of stock variations in the normal product editor is very slow and hard. The platform doesn’t give you a quick way to edit many variations at once. You have to open each product, go through every variation, check if they’re out of stock, and manually disable them. This takes a lot of time, especially if you have hundreds of products. And it’s easy to make mistakes or forget some variations.

That’s why we will use WP Sheet Editor to bulk hide variations. This plugin allows you to view all your products and variations in a spreadsheet, right inside your WordPress dashboard. You can filter the out-of-stock variations and disable them all in bulk in just a few clicks. It’s the fastest and easiest way to manage your product variations without wasting hours doing it by hand.

After installing the plugin and activating your license, you need to follow the steps in the sections below in order to bulk disable the variations that are out of stock.

Disabling vs deleting out-of-stock variations

When you’re managing variable products in WooCommerce, you might wonder: should I disable the variations that are out of stock, or should I delete them completely? Both options hide the variation from your customers, but they work in very different ways.

• What does “disable” mean? Disabling a variation means it stays in your store, but customers won’t see it in the product page; they won’t be able to select or see that variation. You can do this by unchecking the “Enabled” box. The variation is still saved in your system, so you can turn it back on later if it becomes available again. This is a safe and flexible option because you don’t lose any data.
• What does “delete” mean? Deleting a variation removes it completely from your product. All its information like price, size, stock, and image is erased. If you ever want to sell that variation again, you’ll have to create it from scratch. This option is only good if you are sure you will never sell that variation again. Related tutorial: How to bulk delete out of stock variations
• Which option is better? For most store owners, disabling out of stock variations is the best choice. It saves you time, keeps your product data safe, and makes it easier to update your store later. With WP Sheet Editor, you can quickly disable many variations at once without doing it manually for each product.

Open the products spreadsheet

Go to WP Sheet Editor > Edit products to view your WooCommerce products in the spreadsheet.

Option1 — Disable out of stock variations in the spreadsheet

One of the best things about using WP Sheet Editor is that you don’t need to open each product one by one. Instead, you can manage all your variations in one place, just like working in Excel. This saves you a lot of time and makes it easier to find and update the variations you want.

You can view the product variations in the spreadsheet by clicking on the Display variations tool. As you can see below, we have displayed the variations, and they’re shown next to their parent products in the spreadsheet.

Now you can locate the Stock, Stock status and Variation enabled columns.

Once you’re there, you need to uncheck the Variation enabled checkbox in each out of stock variation to disable it.

This is a great way to hide out-of-stock variations from your store. Using the spreadsheet, you can choose exactly which out-of-stock variations to disable, instead of hiding all of them. This is perfect if you only want to hide certain variations but keep others visible for any reason, like showing items that will be restocked soon.

Once you’re done editing the variations, click on Save.

Option 2 — Bulk disable out of stock WooCommerce variations

Editing variations in the spreadsheet is a huge time-saver compared to using the regular product editor. You don’t have to open products one by one—you can see and edit everything in one place.

If you want to quickly find and disable all out-of-stock variations, the best option is to use the Bulk Edit tool. It lets you filter the variations you need and update them all at once, with just a few clicks.

With Bulk Edit, you can change any field for hundreds or even thousands of products or variations at the same time. It’s the fastest way to manage your store efficiently and keep your product data up to date.

First, you need to search for product variations that are out of stock.

To do this, open the Search tool.

Select these values to filter out the out-of-stock variations:

• Tick the Search on variations checkbox.
• Tick the Enable advanced filters checkbox and add this filter:
  • Field: Stock status
  • Operator: =
  • Value: Out of stock
• Click on Run search.

After running the search, the spreadsheet will display all the product variations that are out of stock. We will edit all these variations to disable them from our online WooCommerce store.

Second, you need to bulk hide all out of stock variations from the store catalog.

Start by opening the Bulk Edit tool.

Select these values to bulk disable the selected variations:

• 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: Variation enabled
• Select type of edit: Set value
• Replace existing value with this value: Uncheck this checkbox.
• Select Edit only variations.
• Click on Execute Now.

Manage WooCommerce variations in a spreadsheet!

Keeping your store clean and easy to navigate is important for giving your customers a great shopping experience. Disabling out of stock variations helps you avoid confusion and frustration, so people only see what’s actually available.

Doing this manually in WooCommerce can take a lot of time, especially if you have many variable products. But with WP Sheet Editor, you can manage all your variations in a spreadsheet, filter the ones that are out of stock, and disable them in bulk.

Whether you want to disable just a few variations or hundreds at once, WP Sheet Editor gives you full control in one simple view.