Product status and visibility

Every product is Draft, Published or Archived. The status decides whether customers can see and buy it.

The three statuses

Status	What it means
Draft	Saved but hidden from customers. It can be incomplete.
Published	Live and available to order, as long as customers can find it through an active collection.
Archived	Retired from sale but kept for your records. It's read-only.

Move a product between statuses

You can do this from the Products list (the ⋮ menu on a row) or from the product's own page.

To do this	Use	Notes
Make a draft live	Publish	The product must be complete.
Retire a published product	Archive	Only published products can be archived.
Bring an archived product back	Restore to draft	It stays hidden until you publish it again.
Remove a draft you don't need	Delete draft	Permanent. Only drafts can be deleted.

A draft can't be archived, and a published product can't go straight back to draft. To do that, archive it and then restore it.

Publish a product

Open the ⋮ menu on a draft and select Publish, or open the product and select Publish.
Confirm. If you've changed the product, select Save Draft first so your edits are included.
If the product isn't in an active collection, you're asked Publish without a collection? Select Publish anyway or cancel and add a collection first.

A product must be complete to publish. A standard product needs a name and a price. A product with variants needs every variant priced (and counted, if you track stock). A bundle needs at least one product and a price. See Create a standard product.

Archive and restore

On a published product, select Archive and confirm Archive product.
To bring it back, open an archived product's ⋮ menu and select Restore to draft, then confirm.

Archived products open read-only. Select View product to look at one.

Published but hidden

A published product can still be hidden from shoppers. You'll see an eye-off icon beside its name in the list. Hover over it to see why:

Not in a collection. Add it to a collection.
A collection is inactive. Reactivate the collection on Store Front.

Drafts show the same icon with "Will be hidden from storefront once published". See Create and manage collections.

Turn off one variant

To stop selling one option of a product with variants, turn off Available for sale in its Edit variant window. The product stays published. See Manage product variants.

Good to know

Use the All, Published, Draft and Archived tabs on the Products list to filter. Each tab shows a count.
On a published product's page, the buttons are Archive and Save changes. Save changes updates the live product straight away.
Changing a product's status doesn't change orders that were already placed.
To archive, restore or delete several products at once, see Manage your product list.
To copy a product as a new draft, see Duplicate a product.