Lost Your Drag-and-Drop? How to Sort Shopify Collections After Recent Updates

Hey everyone! I wanted to jump in and share some insights from a recent discussion in the Shopify community that I know many of you are feeling. It's about a change that's caused a bit of a headache for how we manage our product collections, especially when it comes to manual sorting.

Our fellow store owner, Buska555, kicked off a thread titled "Manual collection sorting broken across pages" and really hit on a pain point. They described how recent Shopify updates have, in their words, "removed the ability to manually move products across pages when using 'Sort: Manually.'" If you've been used to the old drag-and-drop functionality for moving products anywhere in a collection, especially those sold-out items you want at the very end, you're probably feeling this too.

The Frustration: When Drag-and-Drop Disappears

Buska555 articulated it perfectly: "Previously, I could drag and drop products to any position in the collection, including moving sold-out products to the end across page boundaries. This was essential for merchandising." Now, the collection editor seems to limit you to about 60 products per page, and there's no obvious way to move items between these pages using the old method. It definitely feels like a step backward when you're trying to keep your store looking sharp and user-friendly.

This isn't just a minor inconvenience; it impacts how you present your products, how easily customers find what they're looking for, and ultimately, your sales. We all want to make sure our best sellers are front and center, and our out-of-stock items are neatly tucked away without a huge manual effort.

The Workaround: Embracing the "Position Tool"

Thankfully, the community is always quick to help. Another expert, mastroke, confirmed that this limitation is indeed a result of the latest Shopify updates but offered a practical workaround: the Position tool. While it's not the familiar drag-and-drop, it does offer a structured way to achieve similar results, especially for bulk actions like moving all sold-out products.

Let's break down how you can use this tool based on mastroke's helpful explanation:

1. Moving Sold-Out Products (or other groups) to the End

This is a common scenario: you want all your sold-out items to appear at the very bottom of your collection, keeping the available products prominent. Here's how the Position tool can help:

• Step 1: Select Your Products. Go into your collection editor. You'll need to filter or manually select all the sold-out products you want to move. Shopify's filtering options can be super useful here.
• Step 2: Access the Position Tool. Once you have your products selected, look for the "Position" options. This is where the magic happens.
• Step 3: Choose "Bottom." Within the Position tool, you'll see options like "top," "bottom," and "custom." For moving sold-out items to the very end, simply select "bottom." This will relocate all selected products to the last positions in your collection, regardless of page boundaries.

Here's a visual from mastroke's post showing these options:

2. Moving Products to a Specific Custom Position

What if you don't want to just send items to the top or bottom, but to a very specific spot in your collection? The "Custom position" option is your friend here:

• Step 1: Select the Product(s). Choose the product or products you want to move.
• Step 2: Access the Position Tool again.
• Step 3: Select "Custom position." This will bring up an input field where you can type in the exact numerical position you want your selected product(s) to appear.
• Step 4: Enter the Desired Position. For example, if you want a product to be the fifth item in your collection, you'd enter "5." Remember, this position is relative to the entire collection, not just the current page you're viewing.

And here's another screenshot from the community thread illustrating the custom position input:

As you can see in the example image, if you have 73 products in your collection, you can place an item anywhere from 1 to 73. This gives you granular control, even if it's not the visual drag-and-drop we were used to.

Reflecting on the "Downgrade"

Buska555 rightly called this change "more of a downgrade than an improvement," and I think many of us would agree. The visual, intuitive drag-and-drop across all products in a collection was incredibly efficient for merchandising. While the Position tool gets the job done, it requires a different mindset and a few more clicks, especially if you're dealing with a large collection and need to make many precise adjustments.

It's a classic example of how platform updates, while often bringing new features or underlying improvements, can sometimes disrupt established workflows. For store owners like us, who are constantly optimizing and managing our products, these small changes can have a real impact on our daily efficiency.

So, what's the takeaway here? For now, the Position tool is our best friend for managing collection sorting after these updates. It might not be as seamless as the old drag-and-drop, but it provides the necessary functionality to keep your collections organized and your merchandising on point. If you, like Buska555, feel strongly about wanting the old functionality back, I'd highly recommend submitting feedback directly to Shopify. The more voices they hear, the better chance we have of seeing improvements or alternative solutions in future updates. Keep an eye on the community forums too; someone might discover an even more clever workaround!