Set a product's categories & attributes

Every product carries its own place in the catalog taxonomy: the categories it belongs to (with one marked primary) and the attributes (custom fields like Color, Material, Warranty) that describe it. You manage all of this from one place — the Taxonomy tab on the product detail page.

For the model behind categories, attributes and attribute groups — how they nest and cascade — see How product taxonomy works. To manage the shared definitions themselves, see Manage categories, Manage attributes and Manage attribute groups.

Before you begin

• Editing controls on this tab are gated by the products.update permission — without it the tab is read-only (no Manage, Assign or Edit buttons appear).
• The underlying writes carry their own permissions: assigning or removing a category requires categories.update, and adding, editing or removing attribute values requires products.manage_variants. See the Product permissions reference.
• The categories and attributes you can pick from must already exist as definitions. Create them first in Settings if the one you need is missing.

Open the Taxonomy tab

1. Open the product (see Edit a product's details for how to reach the detail page).
2. Click the Taxonomy tab.

The tab has two cards:

• Categories — the Primary Category (shown with its full path in an amber star chip) and any Other Categories as outlined chips.
• Attributes — a grouped, read-only table of every attribute value on the product, ordered by attribute group with an Ungrouped bucket for attributes that belong to no group.

Assign categories

1. In the Categories card, click Manage to open the Manage Categories tree browser.
2. Use the search box to filter the tree, or expand folders to browse. The first level auto-expands on open.
3. Find the category you want and use its inline action.

The tree browser is a searchable folder tree. Folder (parent) nodes only expand — only leaf categories are assignable, because in SKU a product is filed against a specific end category, never a parent. Leaf categories have no expand arrow (their empty child lists are stripped), so anything you can twist open is a parent and anything with an action button is a leaf. Leaf nodes show an action on the right depending on their current state:

Node state	What you see	Action
Not on this product	Set Primary and Add buttons	Add files it as an additional category; Set Primary files it as the primary
Already added (not primary)	Green Added chip + Make Primary	Make Primary promotes it to the product's primary
Already the primary	Amber Primary chip	none — it's already primary

Each assignment saves immediately and the chips on the Taxonomy tab update. Click Done to close the browser.

Set (and change) the primary category

A product has at most one primary category. Choosing Set Primary or Make Primary on any leaf sets it as primary and automatically demotes the previous primary to an ordinary "other" category — you never end up with two primaries. Re-selecting a category you already have is allowed: SKU updates the existing link rather than erroring, so you can freely flip a category between additional and primary.

A product can't be filed under the same category twice — a duplicate assignment is rejected by a unique constraint. If you try to assign a parent (non-leaf) category, the request is rejected with a "category is not a leaf" error; pick a leaf instead.

Create a category on the fly

If the category you need doesn't exist yet, use Create New Category at the bottom of the browser:

1. Type the Category name.
2. Optionally pick a Parent (leave empty to create a root category).
3. Leave Add to this product checked to attach it immediately, and choose As additional or As primary.
4. Click Create.

The new category is created, optionally assigned, and the tree reloads to show it.

Remove a category from a product

1. In the Categories card, find the category chip under Other Categories.
2. Click the x on the chip.

Removing a category detaches it from this product only — the category definition itself is untouched and stays available for other products.

The primary category chip has no x. To remove the current primary, first promote another category to primary (which demotes the old one to "other"), then remove it from the Other Categories list.

Assign attributes

1. In the Attributes card, click Assign.
2. In the Assign Attributes dialog, search or scroll the list. Attributes are shown under their attribute group, with an Ungrouped section for the rest. Attributes already on the product are checked and disabled.
3. Check the attributes you want to add.
4. Click Assign — the button shows how many new attributes will be added.

New attributes are added with an empty value; set their values with Edit (below). Assigning attributes is a merge — it adds the selected ones without disturbing attributes already on the product.

Create an attribute on the fly

If the attribute you need isn't listed, click Create New Attribute, enter a name (for example, Color), and click Create. It's created as a simple text attribute, selected in the dialog, and ready to assign. To give it a different type (dropdown, date, checkbox, etc.), edit its definition afterward in Manage attributes.

Edit attribute values

1. In the Attributes card, click Edit.
2. The card switches to a grouped form. Each attribute renders the right input widget for its type:

Attribute type	Input
checkbox	a checkbox
string (default)	single-line text field
longtext	multi-line text area, or a rich-text (HTML) editor when the attribute is configured as HTML
date / datetime	date / date-and-time picker
numeric / integer	number field

3. Fill in or change the values.
4. Click Save (or Cancel to discard).

longtext and option-list (dropdown) attributes render full-width; the rest render two per row. A gear icon next to each attribute opens its settings (Edit attribute settings) in the Settings area — that's where the attribute's type and options are defined, distinct from the value you set here. See the Attribute fields & types reference.

Saving edits also re-applies the values via a merge, so existing attributes you didn't touch are preserved. If any edited attribute is flagged for use on templates, affected packing slips are refreshed automatically.

Edit lock

The Edit button is disabled while another user is editing the product — a tooltip names who holds the lock. If someone takes over while you're editing, the attributes section drops back to read-only and your unsaved changes are discarded. This is the shared product edit lock, not a taxonomy-specific limit.

Set attributes on many products at once

This page assigns attribute values one product at a time. To set the same attribute — or several — across many products, use a bulk tool instead of editing each one:

• Bulk-edit products — tick the products on the products list and click Bulk Edit. Every attribute appears as its own field: choose Set value to stamp a value across the whole selection (or Edit Individually to give each product its own value), or Remove attribute value to clear it.
• Import products from a spreadsheet — add one column per attribute (labelled Attr: <name>) and import. Each non-blank cell upserts that attribute's value on the matching product; blank cells are left untouched. This is the best path for setting attributes on hundreds of products at once. See the importable columns reference.

Remove attributes from a product

While in Edit mode, click the x on any attribute in the form, then Save. Removed attributes are detached from the product first, then the remaining values are saved. Detaching removes the value from this product only; the attribute definition is unaffected.

Attributes shared across the variations of a matrix product can't be removed from an individual variation — SKU keeps them and shows a warning. See Convert & auto-detect product types for how matrix variations share attributes.

Compare varying attributes across a matrix product's variations

For a matrix (parent) product, you can choose which shared attributes appear as columns in the Variations table so you can scan how they differ across children. This lives on the Overview tab, not the Taxonomy tab, and needs the products.manage_variants permission.

1. Open the matrix parent product and stay on the Overview tab.
2. In the Variations card header, click Attributes to Compare.
3. In the Compare Varying Attributes dialog, search or scroll the list of shared attributes and check the ones you want as columns.
4. Click Apply.

The Variations table then shows a column per selected attribute, with each variation's value (or - when empty). Your selection is saved on the parent product, so it persists for the next visit.

How attributes arrive on a product

Attributes surface on the Taxonomy tab from three sources, merged and de-duplicated (by attribute name/id) so each attribute appears once:

1. Directly assigned — added with the Assign dialog above.
2. From a category — when you file a product under a category, SKU auto-creates blank attribute rows on the product for that category's attribute groups and directly linked attributes, ready for you to fill in.
3. From an attribute group assigned to the product — see below.

Assign attribute groups to a product

Beyond individual attributes, a whole attribute group can be attached to a product so all of the group's attributes appear on it in one step. This is driven by the product-to-attribute-group link and is separate from the groups a product inherits through its categories — it lets you add a group's fields to a product whose category doesn't already include them. Manage the group definitions and their member attributes in Manage attribute groups.

Next steps

• Edit a product's details — the rest of the product detail page.
• How product taxonomy works — the concept behind categories, attributes and groups.
• Manage categories · Manage attributes · Manage attribute groups — the shared definitions.
• Product detail page reference — every tab and field on the detail page.

Video transcript

A product's Categories and Attributes tab holds its place in the catalog. The Categories card shows the primary category — here, Drinkware, Water Bottles — in an amber star chip. Below it, the Attributes card lists every attribute value on the product: its material, capacity, and color. Click Manage to open the category tree. Only leaf categories are assignable — each shows Add to file it as an extra category, or Set Primary to make it the main one. The current primary is marked. You can search the tree, or create a new category on the fly, and every change saves immediately.