Visibility of Discontinued Items is Faulty

[Angel]

I'm trying to tidy up my stores. Many of my products have been discontinued. So I thought I'd use the Product Visibility tool to just show the discontinued items so I can save the stats and then delete them. In one store I have both Discontinued Product Lines.

Discontinued Product Lines / Options say on the product page:

• Heads-up!
• Sorry, this product is completely sold out.
• Notify me when it's back in stock.

And the Discontinued Products say:

• Heads-up!
• Sorry, this product has been discontinued

But when I ask the Product Visibility tool to show me only the discontinued products, it says

• Sorry, no products found.

And that is when I select ALL from the Statistics Options Tool.

After deleting some of them, I still have 5 items that are truly discontinued but won't show up under the discontinued visibility option. This is a store with just a few discontinued products. I was hoping to use the Product Visibility Tool in all of my stores as I have quite a few (probably 50+) in just one store alone and would like to do it quickly.

If the visibility of the Discontinued Products isn't working, are the other options in the Product Visibility Tool accurate or maybe they aren't working properly either.

Does anyone know of a work around besides going through 1000's of products to find the Discontinued Products?

[KeegansCreation · Accepted solution]

The only workaround I've found isn't comprehensive but it can find the most likely culprits, bringing the workload down to dozens rather than thousands.

When something has been out of stock for eons or is discontinued, Zazzle hides it from the MP. Therefore things that are completely sold out or discontinued- or have a discontinued product option, which is changeable- will sink to the end of the Last Viewed stack.

I sort by Last Viewed and work my way forward from the last product. I check Product Merchandising which tells me if it is a discontinued product, sold out or if it is merely one option which is discontinued/sold out.

If discontinued, I delete it. Then I drill down by department to find all the others of the same type and delete them too.

If sold out, I let it be.

If it is merely a product option which is discontinued or sold out I change it. Then I drill down by department to find all others that are the same and change them too.

Repeat until I get tired of doing that. But by then I've snagged a fair number (though not all) of the offenders.

[Angel]

@KeegansCreation 

Thank you Susannah for those tips on how to work around this problem. 😊😊😊

Unfortunately with my health I'm not able to keep up the maintenance as I should so I have a lot of products without recent views.

But if I Optimize the products that need that, then if I go by 'Hidden' and then use your tip of sorting by 'Last Viewed' that will work I think.

Thank you for taking the time to help me with this.

Angel

[Harmony]

There are a number of items that are labelled as discontinued and hidden, however the product page says they are only sold out. There is a separate thread about this however no response has been received as to fixing this issue

[Angel]

@Harmony 

Thank you for your reply.

I am aware of that issue. They seem to be more consistent these days about which is which. And on the ones that are a discontinued option or sold out you can still edit the details whereas for the discontinued products you can only delete the product or transfer the design to another product.

My problem is when I asked it to show me the discontinued products it doesn't even though I know there are over at least 29 of them. So that means I have to look through pages of products to go find them. I mean the tool says it shows them right? Maybe they haven't finished implementing the tool on the back end yet.

I'm hoping that IT will see this is a problem, which is why I haven't accepted a solution yet.

[MBS]

Hi @Angel - I still see that issue where selecting "Discontinued Products" doesn't show all of them but when I select "Optimization Needed", I see a whole lot more of the discontinued products.