Bulk editing product descriptions — made simple
Managing product descriptions across a large catalog can get overwhelming — especially when you’re preparing for a campaign for fixing outdated info. With Modify, you can quickly update product descriptions in bulk with just a few clicks.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to set up and apply description edits using Modify’s flexible bulk editing flow.
Getting started
If you haven’t already, install Modify-it from the Shopify App Store. Once installed, open the app and click Create edit to start a new bulk task.
To start updating product descriptions, first choose which products you want to apply the changes to:
- Use Filter products based on condition(s) to narrow down products using specific conditions like tags, inventory, price or etc.
- Or simply select All products to update tags across your entire store.
Once you’ve selected the products you want to edit, click Add new action and choose Product description as the field to update. You can now decide how you want to adjust the descriptions:
Add text to start – Add a snippet of text or HTML to the beginning of your existing descriptions
Add text to end – Append text or HTML to the end of each product description
Remove text from start – Remove a set number of characters from the beginning of the description
Remove text from end – Remove a set number of characters from the end of the description
Replace with – Replace the entire description with your custom input (supports both plain text and HTML)
Capitalize first letter – Make only the first letter of the description uppercase
Capitalize each word – Capitalize the first letter of each word
Uppercase each word – Convert the entire description to uppercase
Lowercase every letter – Convert the entire description to lowercase
Remove – Remove the selected word or phrase from anywhere in the description
Set to – Completely replace the description with a new one
⚠️ For actions like “Add text to start”, “Add text to end”, and “Replace with”, you can input either plain text or formatted HTML. If you want to include spacing or structure, be sure to add appropriate HTML tags like <br> or <p> where needed.
Once your filters and actions are set up correctly, it’s time to decide when your edit should run.
To apply the changes immediately, select Run now.
To schedule the edit for a later time, choose Schedule for later and pick a date and time that works for you.
If you want the changes to automatically revert at a specific time, enable Revert to the original and set the time for the revert.
In the Preview product changes section, you can review the before-and-after view of your product descriptions. This helps you make sure everything is set up correctly before finalizing the edit.
Finalizing Your Bulk Edit
Once you’ve set everything up correctly, click Publish to proceed.
A popup will appear showing a summary of the actions you’ve configured and the scheduled time for the edit.
If everything looks good, click Confirm to create and run your bulk edit task.
Your task is now running!
Head over to the Dashboard page to track its progress.
If you’re editing just a few hundred products, it should finish quickly. For larger edits (thousands of products), it might take a bit longer.
⚠️ Once the edit starts, it can’t be paused or stopped. But no worries — if you need to undo the changes later, you can always revert the task after it’s completed.
Once the task finishes, you can revert if necessary or duplicate the task.
Troubleshooting
If the task finishes without making any changes, it usually means that either no updates were actually needed, or none of your selected conditions matched any products. In this case, your task will appear with the status “Unchanged” in the dashboard.
Double-check all your filters and selected actions, then try again if needed.
If you exceed the current plan limits, you won’t be able to publish the task after clicking the Publish button. Instead, you’ll be prompted to upgrade your plan in order to continue.
If the task fails with a server error, wait a bit and try again. If the issue continues, feel free to reach out to us through the in-app chat support — we’re here to help. It might be a temporary issue with Shopify, or with our servers.
If the configured changes cannot be applied to certain products, those products will appear in the preview with no difference between the before and after values. You’ll also see the reason for the rejected changes clearly displayed in the preview section.
That’s a wrap! We hope Modify has made managing your store easier and more efficient. If you’ve enjoyed using the app, we’d truly appreciate it if you left us a review on the Shopify App Store — your support means the world to us! 😊