Goal: Convert your Shopify products from plain text variant options into variants linked to metaobjects across hundreds or thousands of products at once. Linked options give you structured data behind each value (for things like color swatches) and a single source of truth so you can update option values in one place.

Shopify lets you do this one product at a time in the admin. With Altera you can do it in bulk from a spreadsheet, and your existing variant IDs are preserved so no other variant data is lost.

Prerequisites:

In your Shopify admin, open the product (or products) you want to convert and choose More actions > Export with Altera. For a full catalog, open Altera directly and start a Products export with your usual filters.

Select only the fields you need so the import stays fast and doesn't touch unrelated data. Include ID, Handle, and Title for reference, plus Variant ID, Option1 Name, Option1 Value, and Option1 Linked To. Add the Option2 and Option3 equivalents if your products use more than one option.

Choose Excel format, click Start export, then download the file when it's ready.

The Option1 Linked To column expects the full path of a metafield definition that points at a list of metaobjects. For Shopify's standard color attribute, the value is product.metafields.shopify.color-pattern.

To look this up in your store, go to Settings > Custom data > Products, open Assigned to categories, and find the category attribute you want (for example, shopify.color-pattern). Prepend product.metafields. to get the full reference.

A quick alternative is to link one product manually in the Shopify admin, export it with Altera, and copy the value from the Option1 Linked To column.

Open the exported spreadsheet and paste your metafield reference (for example, product.metafields.shopify.color-pattern) into Option1 Linked To for every variant row you want to convert. Repeat with Option2 Linked To or Option3 Linked To if you're linking those options too. Leave an option's Linked To column blank to keep it as plain text.

If a product uses more than one option (for example, Size and Color), keep every option's Name and Value columns filled in for each variant row, even for options you aren't linking. Shopify rebuilds the variant's full option set on import, so omitting an option can cause it to be dropped.

Altera converts each Option1 Value into a metaobject handle during import. If your option values already match the metaobject handles (for example, Black maps to the color metaobject with handle black), you don't need to change anything. If your values are custom text like Stealth Black, replace the value with the matching metaobject handle from Content > Metaobjects so the import can resolve it.

Save the file under a new name (for example, link-variants.xlsx).

Go to Apps > Altera in your Shopify admin and click Upload file. Select your edited spreadsheet, wait for the analysis to finish, then click Start import. As rows complete you can click through to any updated product to confirm the conversion is working before the full import finishes.

Your variants are now linked to metaobjects instead of storing plain text. Open an updated product in the Shopify admin and you'll see each option value shown as a metaobject entry (for example, the actual color metaobject) that you can click through and edit in one place.