Importing Partial or Messy CSVs
Not every supplier file arrives in perfect shape. Importier is designed to handle incomplete, inconsistent, and poorly structured CSV files gracefully rather than rejecting them outright.
Single-product imports skip the Variants step
If your file contains only one product row, the Variants step is skipped entirely. Variant detection and grouping require at least two rows to be meaningful, so Importier bypasses that step and moves straight to the next applicable stage.
No-pricing imports skip the Tax step
When your CSV does not contain any price or cost columns (or all price values are empty), the Tax configuration step is skipped. There is nothing to adjust, so Importier moves on without prompting you for tax settings.
Auto-derived SKUs from titles
If your file is missing a SKU column or the SKU values are empty, Importier generates SKUs automatically by slugifying the product title. The title is converted to lowercase, spaces are replaced with hyphens, and special characters are stripped. This ensures every product has a unique SKU for Shopify, even when the supplier did not provide one.
Empty Title rows get placeholders
Rows with a blank Title field are not discarded. Instead, Importier assigns a placeholder title (such as Untitled Product 1, Untitled Product 2, etc.) so the row can continue through the import flow. You can edit these placeholders in the Review step before importing.
Sample Data display scans all rows
When previewing your data during column mapping, the Sample Data column does not just show the first row. It scans across all rows in the file to find representative non-empty values for each column. This gives you a clearer picture of what each column contains, even if the first few rows have gaps.
Empty titles are never merged with the row above
Some import tools treat a blank title as a continuation of the previous product (i.e. a variant row). Importier does not do this. Each row is treated as an independent product for safety. If rows genuinely represent variants of the same product, use the Variant Detection and Grouping step to group them explicitly.
For information on how AI fills in other missing fields after upload, see Data Enrichment.