Update items in bulk

The same paste-in table that creates items also updates them. The mechanism is exact title matching, and everything useful — and everything risky — follows from that.

How matching works

For each pasted row, Fenómenus looks for an item of that menu type whose title is exactly the same.

• Found → that item is updated.
• Not found → a new item is created, published.

Matching looks at the menu type and the title, not at the status, so an item currently on Draft can be the one that gets updated.

What an update changes

Because empty cells are skipped, an update applies only what your sheet actually contains. That is a safety property: you cannot accidentally blank the prices you left out.

Build the sheet from an export

Always. Take Download as Excel, edit the values there, and paste those rows back.

Retyping titles is how duplicates are born. These all fail to match and create a second item instead:

• a trailing space;
• different capitalization;
• a curly apostrophe instead of a straight one;
• a differently encoded accent;
• a vintage or size added to a wine name.

Update only the rows you changed

Re-importing an entire export is harmless to the data but not free: every matched item is moved to the end of the menu order, so a full re-import scrambles the arrangement of the whole menu.

Paste the rows you actually changed.

The category is applied to every row

The batch's Assign category choice is applied to every matched item, not only to new ones. Two consequences:

• an update batch can move items into a section unintentionally;
• an update batch is also the fastest way to move items into a section deliberately.

If you only mean to change prices, import one category at a time and select that same category, so nothing moves.

A typical update: a price rise

1. Export the menu and keep the file.
2. Apply the increase in the spreadsheet.
3. Delete the rows you are not changing.
4. Delete the category column.
5. Paste the remaining rows, with the correct category selected.
6. Save and read the counts — they should be 0 new items created, N items updated.
7. Export again and compare against the "before" file.
8. Re-check the order.
9. Check the public menu signed out.

A non-zero "created" count on an update batch means titles did not match. Stop and investigate before continuing.

Updating across languages

Prices are shared across an item's translations, so a bulk price update applies in every language. Titles and descriptions are per language and are not touched by an import.

Recovering from a bad update

1. Correct the values in the spreadsheet.
2. Re-import the same titles — matched rows are updated in place.
3. Delete anything created by mistake, remembering that deletion is permanent.
4. Re-check the order.

The "before" export is what makes this recoverable. See A safe bulk update workflow.