When one feed row carries several variants — sizes, colors, or styles — split it into separate products so each variant becomes its own catalog item. Add a rule with the Split into variants action, name the column or list that holds the variants, and give each variant its own ID. Your edits stay in a draft until you Publish.
Why split one feed row into separate products#
Ad networks want one catalog item per thing a shopper can actually buy. A single feed row that packs three sizes and two colors into one entry can only advertise as one product — so a shopper who searches for the medium can't be shown the medium, and out-of-stock sizes can't drop out on their own.
Splitting fixes that. Each size or color becomes its own product with its own price, availability, image, and identifier, and the networks group them back together as one variant family.
How to split a feed into variants#
Splitting is an action on a rule, so it lives on the catalog's Rules tab alongside your other rules.
- Open the catalog from your project's Catalogs list and go to the Rules tab.
- Choose + Add rule, then set the action to Split into variants.
- In the column to split on field, name the column that holds the variants. A repeated feed element (like
variant) fans out on its own. To split on a single cell that lists sizes or colors separated by commas or semicolons, first declare that column as a List type (and pick its separator) on the Mapping tab — otherwise the split reads the whole cell as one item and you get just one product back. See Mapping your feed fields. - Give each resulting variant its own ID (see the next section) — this is required.
- Publish the catalog so the split takes effect. Nothing reprocesses until you publish.
A split rule shows a distinct summary — "One product per item in {source} — N rules below run per variant" — so you can see at a glance what it does and how many rules downstream of it run per variant.
Give each variant its own stable ID#
Every variant needs its own product ID. If they share one, all the variants collide onto a single catalog item and the split does nothing useful — so this isn't optional, and Renable won't let you publish a split without it.
There's no separate ID setting to fill in. The ID comes from your ordinary ID field mapping: on the Mapping tab, map the ID field to a column that lives inside each variant — the variant's own SKU, for example. Because the mapping runs after the split, once per variant, each variant then resolves its own ID. See Mapping your feed fields.
If the ID you map doesn't depend on a per-variant column, Renable blocks the publish and tells you why — every variant of a product would otherwise get the same ID and collide. Point the ID at the variant's own SKU (or a value built from it) to fix it.
Every rule below the split runs once per variant#
The split is a divider on the Rules tab: rules above it run once on the original row, and every rule below it runs once per variant — including the field mapping. That's what lets each variant get its own ID, price, and availability.
Downstream rules can read both kinds of data:
- The parent row's shared fields — the title, brand, or description that's the same for every variant — stay available to each variant.
- The per-variant fields — the values inside each variant, like its own size, SKU, or price — become available as that variant's own values.
So a rule below the split can, for example, build a title from the shared product name plus each variant's own size. To confirm a split behaved as you expected, use Trace a product on the Rules tab toolbar — after a split it lets you step through each variant and see how every field resolved. See Fixing your feed data with rules for how rules, conditions, and Trace work.
You can split a feed only once#
A catalog's feed can carry one split. You can't stack a split on sizes and another on colors to get every size-and-color combination — a second split is rejected. To get one product per combination, split on a single column or list that already enumerates each combination.
A single feed row can produce up to 1,000 variants. If a row lists more, Renable keeps the first 1,000 and warns you.
A row that has nothing to split — a product with a single variant, or an empty variant column — passes through unchanged as one product, so a catalog that mixes variant products and simple products just works.
Your changes aren't live until you Publish#
Like everything else in the catalog workspace, a split you add stays in a draft and doesn't reprocess anything until you Publish. And "Import now" uses your last published configuration, not your draft — so after adding a split, publish (or choose Publish & import) before you expect to see the variants. See Fixing your feed data with rules and Transforming your feed.
Or ask Aimée#
You don't have to build the split yourself. Tell Aimée in plain language — "split my feed into one product per size, using the variant SKU as the ID" — and she can set up the split rule and the per-variant ID mapping, then publish once you approve.
FAQ#
Can I split on sizes and colors at the same time?
Not by adding two splits — a feed can only be split once. To get one product per size-and-color combination, split on a single column or list where each entry already represents one combination (for example a variants element that lists each size/color pair).
Does each variant count toward my plan's product limit?
Yes. Every variant a split produces counts as one product, the same as any other catalog item. See Plans and limits.
What if one variant is missing a field the others have?
Each variant only sees its own values, so a variant that's missing a field simply has that field empty — it won't accidentally borrow a sibling variant's value or fall back to the parent row's combined list.