How to Back Up Shopify Metaobjects and Translations

The data CSV exports cannot touch

Shopify's native CSV export covers products and customers. It completely ignores two increasingly important data types: metaobjects and translations. If your store relies on either — and many modern stores do — you have a significant backup gap.

What are metaobjects and why do they matter?

Metaobjects (introduced in 2023) allow merchants to create custom structured content types directly in Shopify. Common uses include:

• Size guides — structured measurement tables linked to product categories
• Store locator data — addresses, hours, and coordinates for physical locations
• Team member profiles — bios and photos for the "About Us" page
• Product specifications — technical data displayed on PDPs via metafield references
• FAQ sections — question/answer pairs surfaced on product or collection pages
• Brand partnerships — logos, descriptions, and links for brand pages

Metaobjects are referenced by themes via metafields. Lose the metaobject, and the theme section that references it shows blank content or errors.

What are translations and why do they matter?

Shopify Markets and the Translate & Adapt app allow stores to serve content in multiple languages. Translations cover:

• Product titles, descriptions, and SEO metadata in each language
• Collection names and descriptions
• Page content and blog posts
• Navigation menu labels
• Theme content (section headings, button labels)

Translations are stored separately from the original content. A product deletion does not always remove its translations cleanly, creating orphaned data. Conversely, re-creating a deleted product does not restore its translations — those must be re-entered manually for each language.

How metaobjects and translations get lost

• App conflicts — apps that manage metafields or content can inadvertently modify or delete metaobject references
• Schema changes — modifying a metaobject definition can cascade to all entries of that type
• Bulk operations — deleting products that reference metaobjects can leave broken references
• Theme changes — switching themes may lose metaobject connections
• Translation overwrites — importing content in one language can accidentally clear translations in another
• API changes — third-party tools that sync translations may fail silently after API updates

The challenge of backing up these entities

Metaobjects and translations require backup apps to use newer Shopify APIs (2023+). Many older backup solutions were built before metaobjects existed and have not added support. Key requirements for proper backup:

• Support for metaobject definitions (schemas) and entries (content)
• Preservation of metafield references between products and metaobjects
• Per-locale translation backup (not just the primary language)
• Ability to restore translations independently of content

How SmartBackup handles metaobjects and translations

SmartBackup backs up both metaobjects and translations as first-class entities:

• Metaobject definitions — the schema (field types, validations) is preserved
• Metaobject entries — all content entries with their field values
• Translation resources — per-locale translations for all supported entity types
• Reference integrity — metafield references are maintained during restore

Visual diff shows changes to metaobjects and translations between backups, so you can catch unintended modifications before they affect your storefront in any language.

Best practices

• Back up before modifying metaobject schemas — field type changes can be destructive
• Back up before importing translations — bulk translation imports can overwrite existing work
• Review metaobject changes after app installs — some apps create or modify metaobject definitions
• Keep translation backups in sync with content backups — they are separate but related