What are dummy variations?
Created Nov 22, 2022
1 min read
This article covers the three important aspects of dummy variations.
- What are dummy variations?
- Why do dummy variations exist?
- How are dummy variations created?
What are dummy variations?
Dummy variations are the possible product variations that were not specified in the uploaded template.
Why do dummy variations exist?
Etsy rejects our uploads unless we provide all possible variation combinations, however, in practice, many listings do not have all possible combinations. These listings should still be uploaded so we create the dummy variations to satisfy Etsy’s requirement automatically.
Important note If your products have more than 70 option values you will receive an error. In this example you have 6 option values. Those are small, med, large, red, blue, and green.
How are dummy variations created?
Dummy variations are created when your variations do not address every possible option combination.
Say your upload document looks something like the table above. Without dummy variations, you would have six variation combinations:
However, with dummy variations, you end up with 9 different variation combinations.
On the other hand, the following tables will not create dummy variations. In this scenario, all possible variation combinations are already accounted for.
