Product categories drive how a WooCommerce catalog is organized so that customers can find products easily. Exporting and importing them between systems means preserving the parent/child hierarchy without breaking it.
WP All Import and WP All Export were designed to handle that hierarchy through the same intuitive drag-and-drop user interface used for every other WooCommerce field, keeping parent/child relationships intact on both export and import.
This guide walks through both processes, including advanced workflows that both plugins support to cover more complex scenarios.
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What Are Product Categories in WooCommerce?
WooCommerce product categories are a hierarchical taxonomy used to group products by type. Unlike product tags, which group products without hierarchy, or product attributes, which define product variations, product categories are more structurally complex.
They are usually nested into parent/child relationships, where each level acts like a parent to the one below it. For example, a Women’s Clothing category can have a Summer Collection subcategory, which also contains a Sundresses category. Visually, the hierarchy looks like Women’s Clothing › Summer Collection › Sundresses.
That kind of hierarchy is exactly what needs to survive intact during a site migration, a sync to an external system, or a bulk catalog reorganization. This is why understanding how to export and import WooCommerce product categories is important.
How to Export Product Categories in WooCommerce
The Basic WooCommerce Product Categories Export Workflow
- Set up the export. Go to All Export → New Export from the WordPress admin dashboard. Choose Taxonomies as the post type and select Product categories as the subtype.
- Add a filter (if needed). To narrow the export to only a subset of product categories, use the filtering options. Otherwise, skip that step and jump straight to the next step by clicking Customize Export File.
- Map the fields. On the Drag & Drop screen that appears, the Term ID, Term Name, and Term Slug fields are added by default in the column selection area. For hierarchical categories, also drag in the Parent ID, Parent Name, and Parent Slug. These are the fields that will keep all subcategories correctly nested when the file is reimported.
- Choose a format and run it. Select an Export Type that is most ideal for your export: CSV (default selection), Excel, or XML. Next, click Continue, configure the remaining export settings, then run the export and download the file.
What Category Data You Can Export from WooCommerce
WP All Import makes it possible to export the following category data from your WooCommerce store:
| Data | What it captures |
|---|---|
| Term ID, Name, Slug, Description | Core category identity and description |
| Parent ID, Parent Name, Parent Slug | Hierarchy; required for exporting subcategories correctly |
| Term meta | Custom metadata, including category thumbnail images |
| Product count | Number of products currently assigned to each category |
Exporting Product Categories Directly vs. Exporting Products with Categories
WP All Export enables exporting product categories in two ways, and they serve two different purposes.
- Direct taxonomy export: This is the method that is covered in this guide, which exclusively targets product categories without touching the product data. It’s the right approach to use when the goal is to migrate, backup or sync the category structure by itself.
- Categories within a product export: Here, categories are exported as a field within a full WooCommerce product export. Each product row includes its assigned categories alongside the price, SKU, and other relevant product fields.
Advanced WooCommerce Category Export Options
Nested multi-level hierarchies
WP All Export makes it easy to export category structures with multiple levels of subcategories. These export using the same hierarchy fields as simple parent/child exports. See Nested, Hierarchical Taxonomies for the details.
Migrating categories to another store
Migrating product categories to another WooCommerce store requires a specific workflow to ensure that the migration runs successfully. WP All Export includes a dedicated export mode (accessed via the Migrate Product categories button on the New Export screen) that bundles categories with the settings needed to recreate them on another site. This option packages the category data together with the import template needed to recreate it on the destination site.
Exporting a subset of categories
WP All Import includes a robust filtering functionality that makes it possible to narrow down an export to only a specific subset of categories, rather than exporting the full taxonomy. See Filtering Exported Data for details on how to use the filter effectively.
Recurring exports
For scenarios where you need to run WooCommerce product category exports on a schedule to keep an external system or backup in sync automatically, WP All Export includes the option to schedule exports to run automatically. Details are in Automatic Scheduling.
How to Import Product Categories in WooCommerce
The Basic WooCommerce Product Categories Import Workflow
- Set up the import. Go to All Import → New Import from your WordPress admin dashboard. Upload the import file, choose Taxonomies as the import type, select Product categories as the subtype, and click Set Up Import.
- Review and filter (optional). Click Create Filters to access the Review Import File screen from where you can confirm that the data parsed correctly and apply a filter to import only specific product categories. Skip this step completely to import the full file.
- Map the fields. On the Drag & Drop screen, map the incoming term name and description into the Name & Description panel. If the import file includes categories with sub-categories, expand the Other Category Options panel and map the incoming parent data, such as the ID, name, or slug, to the Parent Term field. Without mapping this, the hierarchy would not carry over.
- Preview and configure. Click Preview to see what the categories will look like after being imported. Click Continue to Import Settings to proceed to the Import Settings screen from where you can set things like a Unique Identifier (Auto-detected by default) for the import and how re-running the import should behave. Once all settings have been configured, click Continue to proceed.
- Run and verify. On the Confirm & Run screen, click Confirm and Run Import to start the process. Once it finishes, verify the results under Products → Categories.
What Category Data You Can Import into WooCommerce
WP All Import maps the following category fields on import:
| Data | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name, slug, description | Core category identity and description |
| Parent term | Accepts ID, name, or slug. All three work |
| Term meta/custom fields | Any custom metadata attached to the category |
| Category images/thumbnails | Mapped as term meta |
Updating vs. Creating Categories on Re-Import
When a taxonomy import is run more than once, one key problem that often occurs is that it gets duplicated. WP All Import, however, avoids this issue through its Unique Identifier Auto-detect feature, which it uses to match incoming rows against categories that already exist on the site.
When a match is found, the existing category updates instead of duplicating. For instances where certain categories no longer appear in the file, WP All Import includes settings so a re-import can be configured to create, update, or delete as needed.
Advanced WooCommerce Category Import Options
Assigning categories during a full product import
Outside of importing categories as a standalone taxonomy import, they can also be imported and mapped during a full WooCommerce product import. That workflow is covered in How to Import and Export WooCommerce Products.
Importing category images via term meta
Category thumbnail images are stored as term meta rather than as a standard WooCommerce field. As such, adding or updating them requires a dedicated taxonomy import, which is covered in Import Taxonomy Meta and Images.
Migrating categories from another site
A category bundle exported from another WooCommerce store, containing both the category data and the import template, can be uploaded directly using WP All Import. This is done through the same import process covered in this section, to recreate the categories without manual field mapping.
Final Thoughts
Category imports and exports, as simple as they may seem, can make or break a WooCommerce site if not implemented correctly. Edge cases such as a migration with hundreds of nested subcategories, a bulk rename of categories across an entire catalog, or a sync that needs to run unattended on a schedule are usually the instances where they fail.
WP All Export and WP All Import were designed to handle both simple and edge-case exports and imports of WooCommerce product categories, all from an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface.
Export and Import Product Categories in WooCommerce - Frequently Asked Questions
You can export WooCommerce product categories to CSV with WP All Export. The steps are as follows:
1. Go to All Export → New Export
2. Select Taxonomies as the export post type and Product categories as the subtype
3. Use the Drag & Drop screen to select the fields to include such as name, slug, description, and any others needed
4. Choose CSV as the export format and run the export
Use WP All Import to import product categories into WooCommerce. Go to All Import → New Import, upload the CSV, Excel, or XML file, and select Taxonomies as the import type with Product categories as the subtype. WP All Import displays the file's columns on the Drag & Drop screen, where each one maps to a category field before the import runs.
You can import product categories with a parent/child hierarchy using WP All Import. It includes a setting that preserves category hierarchy through a dedicated field during import. Go to All Import → New Import and set up the category import as usual, then on the Drag & Drop screen, expand Other Category Options and map the incoming parent data to the Parent Term field.
Yes, WP All Export can include category thumbnail images in a category export. Since WooCommerce stores these images as term meta rather than a standard field, add the relevant term meta field to the export layout alongside name, slug, and description before running the export.
