"My images are missing after import" — image URL failure (silent)

What actually happens on import

Product creation and image fetching are two separate steps. Shopify first creates the product from the row data, then, afterward, tries to download whatever's in the Image Src column and attach it. If that second step fails, the product still exists — it's just missing its photo. Nothing about a failed image fetch stops the row from counting as imported.

Why the fetch fails

Image Src has to be a direct, publicly reachable URL to the image file itself — no login, no click-through page in between. The links that break this most often look like they should work: a Dropbox "share" link (dropbox.com/s/...) opens a preview page, not the raw file, unless it ends in a direct-download parameter; a Google Drive share link behaves the same way; a URL that's only reachable on your internal network or behind a password is unreachable from Shopify's servers entirely.

A separate cause produces the same symptom for a different reason: pasting an image directly into a spreadsheet cell (Google Sheets' "Insert image in cell," or an embedded picture in Excel) doesn't put a URL in that cell at all — when the sheet is saved as CSV, that cell exports as blank or as a formula error, because there was never a text URL to begin with, only a picture object layered on top of the grid.

How to verify and fix it

Paste a few of your Image Src values directly into a browser address bar — if you see anything other than the raw image (a login screen, a preview page, a 404), that URL will fail on import too. Replace share links with true direct-file URLs from a public host, and never rely on an image pasted into a cell rather than linked as text.