Export the Square item library without breaking SKUs

How to export items from Square, which file type and filter to pick, and how to open the file so Excel keeps the zeros in your SKUs and barcodes.

Most work on a Square catalog starts with an export, whether you are updating prices from a supplier or keeping a backup before an import. Getting the file takes a minute. The trouble starts when it opens in a spreadsheet and the SKU column changes without telling you.

Export the item library

In the Square Dashboard, go to Items & services, then Items, then Item library. On some accounts that first menu is called Items & inventory or Items & menus. Click Actions, then Export Library. Square asks which items you want and which file type. Click Export and the file downloads.

Keep a copy of that download before you change anything. Square suggests it so you can go back to your old library if an import goes wrong. Descriptions with rich text formatting come out with HTML tags such as </p> in them.

All items or the filtered list

Items matching applied filters gives you only the list on screen, so set the filters first, for example to one category. All items gives you everything in the library.

Pick All items for a backup, and for any file you plan to match a supplier list against. A filtered export works for a small job on one category, but it leaves out everything outside the filter.

Pick Excel over CSV

Square offers Excel (.xlsx) and CSV, and strongly recommends Excel. It matters most for your SKUs. Square formats the cells in its Excel download as text, and an .xlsx file remembers that. When Excel opens it, 0012345 stays 0012345. A CSV is plain text with no note about what each column holds, so the spreadsheet guesses.

Double click a CSV and Excel shows 0012345 as 12345, though the CSV on disk stays whole until you save it from Excel.

Open the file safely

Open the .xlsx the usual way. Excel may mark SKU cells with a small green triangle and offer to convert them to numbers. Leave them as text, and save the file as .xlsx again when you are done.

If you have a CSV, import it into Excel instead of opening it. Square's troubleshooting article gives the steps: create a new spreadsheet, choose File, then Import, pick the CSV file and follow the wizard. When it shows your columns, set the SKU column to Text before you click Finish. Set the GTIN column to Text in the same step. In Excel for Windows, choose Data, then From Text/CSV. In the preview, set Data Type Detection to Do not detect data types, then click Load.

In Google Sheets, use File, then Import, and untick the option to convert text to numbers, dates and formulas.

Check the file before you import it

Before an edited export goes back to Square, sort the SKU column and read the top of it. Codes that lost their zeros are easy to spot there. Search the column for E+ to catch scientific notation. Leave the Token column and the order of the columns as they came, because Square needs both to read the file. Anything you type under New Quantity replaces the stock count Square has for that location, and a zero there sets it to zero.

Supplier updates can skip the spreadsheet

If the export is for a supplier price change, you may not need to open it at all. Load the export into the Square tool along with the price list. The tool reads a CSV as text, so leading zeros stay where they were. The file it gives back is your own export, with Square's columns in their order and the SKU, GTIN and Token cells stored as text.

Open the Square tool to try it with your own file.

Import that file from Actions, then Import library, the same way you would import your own edits.