Filters decide which records leave your store. Column selection decides which fields come with them. Both appear when you choose Advanced export.
Filters by data type #
Products #
- Product Status. Published, Draft, Pending Review, Private. Select several by holding Ctrl or Cmd. Leave empty for all.
- Product Type. Simple, Variable, Grouped, External or Affiliate, and Variation. Selecting Variable without Variation gives you parent products with no variation rows, which is rarely what you want for a re-import.
- Stock Status. In Stock, Out of Stock, On Backorder.
- Category. Search and select one or more categories.
- Tag. Search and select one or more tags.
- Search or Include. Matches name, SKU or ID against text you type.
- Date From and Date To. Limits by creation date.
Orders #
- Order Status. Processing, Completed, On Hold, Cancelled, Refunded, Failed, Pending Payment.
- Date From and Date To. The filter you will use most. A month-by-month order export is easier to handle and easier to re-run than one enormous file.
- Customer. Restricts to specific customers.
- Product. Restricts to orders containing selected products.
Customers #
- Role. Customer, Subscriber, and any other role on the site.
- Date From and Date To. By registration date.
Coupons #
- Date range and coupon code matching.
Reviews #
- Date range, rating, approval status, and the product the review belongs to.
Categories and tags #
- Name. Partial, case-insensitive match.
- Slug. Exact match. Several slugs can be given, separated by commas.
- Parent category. Enter a parent ID to export only its children.
Applies to every type #
- Record limit. Caps how many rows come out. Set a small number while you are testing so each attempt takes seconds rather than minutes. Zero means no cap. A site-wide default can be set under Settings.
Column selection #
The next step lists every available column grouped by area. Identifiers, core fields, pricing, stock, shipping dimensions, categories and attributes, images, and so on.
Columns you should almost always keep #
- ID. Without it, a re-import cannot match rows to existing records and will create duplicates.
- SKU for products. Acts as a secondary identifier and is often more portable between systems than a numeric ID.
- Parent SKU if your catalogue has variable products. Variations need it to attach to the right parent.
- Status. Leave it out and imported records may not land with the publish state you expect.
Duplicated fields #
The product column list contains some fields twice: once as a WordPress post field and once as a WooCommerce field. Name and post_title hold the same data, as do Description and post_content, Status and post_status. The post_ versions exist so older saved templates keep working. Pick one set and stay consistent. For new work, use the WooCommerce names.
Custom meta #
Tick Include custom meta and the export gains every custom field written by your other plugins, each prefixed with meta and its key. This is how you carry across data added by a product add-ons plugin, a brands plugin, or your own code.
It also multiplies the width of the file. A store with several active plugins can easily add a hundred columns this way, which makes the export slower and the spreadsheet harder to read. Turn it on when you need those fields, not by habit.
Hidden meta #
Include hidden meta adds WooCommerce internal fields whose keys start with an underscore. These are values WooCommerce manages itself, such as internal counters and cached calculations.
Useful for troubleshooting and for a genuinely complete migration. Risky if you edit them by hand, because WooCommerce expects specific formats and does not validate them on import the way it validates a price. Export them if you like, but change them only when you know what a particular key does.
A practical approach #
Start with a quick export to see the full column list. Note the twenty or thirty columns you actually care about. Build an advanced export with just those, save it as a template, and use the template from then on. Narrow exports run faster, produce spreadsheets people can read, and carry far less risk of overwriting a field you did not mean to touch.
