A useful example, with the checks in view
SYNTHETIC INPUTS · NO CUSTOMER DATAA price drop, a blank field, and one important difference.
Practice reviewing a Shopify CSV with fictional products. See why clearing a value and omitting its column are different operations.
What you’ll use
The original catalog has four variant rows across three fictional products. The edited copy changes a mug from 24.00 to 2.40, clears the linen tote’s Vendor, changes a notebook option, and adds two formatting problems.
These are practice files, not products to import into your store. The first two also power the tool’s “Load sample files” button.
The costly-looking edit
Everyday mug, Stone option:
24.00 → 2.40
A 90% reduction. At the default 30% review threshold, the actual comparison engine reports a price-change warning. It cannot know whether this is a mistake or an intentional sale.
The subtle blank
Linen tote’s Vendor changes from “Studio North” to an empty cell.
The engine reports a previously populated value becoming blank. In overwrite mode this may clear saved data. The warning is about the cell’s meaning, not just its appearance.
Try it in the tool
- Open CatalogGuard and choose “Load sample files,” or select the original and edited files above.
- Keep “Update existing products” and the 30% threshold. Run preflight and inspect both Issues and Before / after.
- Find the mug price change and blank Vendor. Notice the notebook’s option identity shift, capitalized “Active,” and surrounding whitespace in “ 38.00 ” too.
- In Optional fixes, review what the tool proposes. It offers formatting corrections; it does not guess a replacement price, vendor, SKU or option.
- For the separate omission experiment, replace the edited file with the Vendor-column-omitted file. Keep the original catalog. This file changes no remaining values and omits Vendor entirely.
What was checked
The downloadable files were run through CatalogGuard’s actual parse, inspect and compare functions on October 11, 2026. The first pair produced five findings: four warnings and one status error. The omission comparison kept all other values unchanged.
This is an engine-level check in Node, not a Shopify import. Keep your backup and confirm Shopify’s import preview, overwrite setting and current field requirements before using real data.
Ready to try it?
Every feature and export is free. No account is needed. Start with a practice file, then keep your real inputs local.