About Product Status

As you work with products, the status of the product will change. Understanding what statuses mean and how they work will be helpful when managing your products over time.

What is Product Status?

Product status can be thought of as the condition of the product. The status indicates whether the product has been recently changed, or if it has been deployed on your store, or if has been retired from your catalog.

The status of a product can affect what you can change about the product so you may have to change the status in order to change some settings on the product.

In some cases, the status can affect how you can locate or find the product. Many of the search mechanisms in the Command Console allow you to filter your search results by status.

Viewing a Product's Status

You can see the status of a product when you are viewing or editing it in the Product Editor. The status will also appear in other areas of the Command Console when viewing information about a product.

Definitions of Statuses

The following table defines the various statuses a product can have:

Status	Definition
Design	When a product has the design status it means that the current product setup (also called in the version in the interface) has not yet been deployed to your store. The design status does not mean that the product has never been deployed; products can be put in the design status even if they have been deployed when other certain settings are changed. Some settings for a product cannot be changed unless the product is in design status. This means that you have to make a minor change to the product (to put it in design status) and then change the setting you wanted to change but were unable because the product was in deployed status.
Deployed	When a product is in the deployed status it means that the current product setup is the same product setup that is available for sale on your store. Some settings cannot be edited if the product has the deployed status. If a setting or attribute is not available (grayed out or inactive) you should make a minor change to the product to put the product the "Design" status. Products in the design status can then be modified and redeployed to your store. For more information about deploying products, see About Deploying Products or Deploying Products.
Deployed: Expired	When a product with variations had different start or end dates for the variation(s) and/or locale(s), this status is used. This status indicates that all the variations or locales have ended. This status is only used when the Product Lifecycle setting is used. See About the Product Lifecycle Setting for more information.
Retired	When a product has the retired status it means that the product cannot be purchased or seen on your store. For products to be put in the retired status you must retire the product using either the Product Editor or the Import and Export tool. For more information about retiring products, see About Retiring Products or Retiring Products.