Shopify product import: prices are blank or wrong after upload
Some products imported with no price at all, and others came in at $0.00 or a number that's clearly wrong. Shopify didn't reject the file — it just couldn't parse what was in the price cell, or read it as something other than what you meant. Drop your file in below to check it.
What Shopify expects in the price column
The Variant Price column (and Variant Compare At Price, if you're using it for a strikethrough sale price) only accepts a plain decimal number: digits, an optional period as the decimal separator, and nothing else. 29.99 is valid. Anything with a currency symbol, a thousands-separator comma, extra whitespace, or a formula reference is not something the importer can turn into a price — it either drops the value, imports the row with a blank price, or in some cases rejects the row entirely depending on how far off the text is from a real number.
Breaker 1: currency symbols and thousands separators
This usually happens when the price column was typed or pasted as text rather than entered as a true numeric value — for example typing $29.99 directly into the cell, or pasting a price list that includes commas for thousands like 1,299.00. Excel will often display a text-formatted cell so it looks identical to a proper number, but the underlying cell content is a string, and Shopify's CSV parser reads that string literally rather than interpreting it as a price. A blank result on import isn't Shopify failing to notice the price — it's Shopify correctly reporting that what it received wasn't a number.
Breaker 2: European locale decimal commas
Spreadsheet applications set to a European regional locale use a comma as the decimal separator and a period (or nothing) for thousands — so a price that displays correctly on screen as 29,99 is, by that locale's own convention, right. But Shopify's CSV import always expects the US/period convention (29.99) regardless of the store's own country or currency settings. When a file built under a comma-decimal locale is exported to CSV, the price cells carry a comma where Shopify expects a period, and the importer can't read the value as intended — leading to a blank price, or in some cases a wildly inflated one if the comma is misread as a thousands separator instead.
How to check / fix it
Format the price columns as plain numbers with no currency symbol before exporting, and check your spreadsheet application's regional settings if you're outside the US to confirm whether it's using a comma or a period as the decimal mark. Never leave a price cell blank if the product is meant to be sold at a real price — a blank cell imports as $0.00, not as "unchanged." Upload the file above and the checker will flag any price cell it can't confidently parse as a plain number before anything reaches your store.