What is CSV import?

What it is genuinely good for

• Loading data that already exists as a file.
• Migrating a catalog between stores.
• One-off transformations with logic only a spreadsheet can express.

The five ways it bites

1. No undo. The previous values live only in an export you may not have taken.
2. Handle matching. Change a handle and the import creates a duplicate product instead of updating the original.
3. Spreadsheet damage. Excel strips leading zeros from barcodes and localises decimals.
4. Partial rows. Omit a column and you can blank the field rather than leave it alone.
5. Staleness. Anything that changed while you were editing gets overwritten.

Safer habits

• Always export first and keep the file — that export is your only undo.
• Import a five-row version before the full file.
• Open CSVs in a text-safe editor, or force text columns when importing to a spreadsheet.
• Never change handles in a file meant to update existing products.

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