How to remove products from your catalog

You can remove products from your catalog by unpublishing or archiving them. This will take them out of your public catalog but they will remain in your products list in case you ever need them again. This also allows you to keep important historical data for reporting.

If you prefer to also remove items from your products list view, you have the additional option to archive them. When you unpublish a product it remains in your main product list view as "unpublished" but when you also archive a product this removes that product from the list view to help keep things cleaner. This will hide the products from your list but you will still be able to search for them and bring them back if needed.

To get started head to your Products page and select the Organize tab:

Step 1 Select product(s)

Click on Search & Filter to find the product(s) you would like to unpublish and/or archive. Note that you can use multiple filters to refine your search:

Stacked search filters:

Step 2 Remove a single product or products in bulk

To remove a single product select the checkboxes for the product(s) you want to unpublish and/or archive:

Click on the catalog name and uncheck/remove the product from the catalog list:

To remove multiple products click on Bulk Edit which will select all the products on the page:

Then click on Publish/Unpublish, make a selection from the drop-down menu, and click save:

How to view archived products

By default archived products are completely hidden from the product manager unless you search for them specifically. You can do this by clicking on "Archived" found in the drop-down menu seen here:

This will then show you a list of all your archived products:

Why can't I delete products?

The reason you can't delete products entirely is because accurate reporting is crucial for keeping track of your order history. Candid keeps a record of every product that's ever been in the system, even when they get deleted in your synced ecommerce store, as a safeguard against accidentally poking holes in your reporting. For example an order from last year with 100% deleted products still needs to show correct quantity and price totals.

If you've ever seen Back To The Future, you may remember scenes where Marty starts fading out of pictures and reality because he's about to make some horrible change to the past. With Candid, it's basically the same thing.

While this can seem counterintuitive, it's essential that we don't poke holes in the past that will throw off future reporting (sales numbers, customer order history, etc).