Shopify's product pages describe no way to revert a saved description, so the old text has to come from somewhere else: a CSV export you made earlier, a copy in a document, or Actorly's history. If Actorly was installed before the edit, open the change, read the old description, and use Restore this value to put it back after you confirm the exact text.
First, do not edit the product again
Every new save is another change. Before you retype anything, find the old text. If someone else is working on the same product, tell them to stop for a few minutes.
Actorly takes the same care: before it writes, it checks that the field is still what it was when you opened the restore. If someone edited it in between, it stops, so it will not overwrite a change you have not seen.
Where the old text might be
Work down this list.
- A CSV export. From the Products page, choose Export and pick a CSV file. Shopify says the file can be used for creating a backup of your products. If you exported before the edit, the file holds the old description.
- A document or a theme draft where the text was written first.
- A teammate's browser tab that has not been refreshed. Do not close it yet.
- Actorly's history, if it was installed before the edit.
Shopify's help page on editing products says you can change product details at any time and that changes can affect your reports. It does not describe reverting a description.
Find the change in Actorly
Actorly is a Shopify app that keeps the old and new value of the changes it recorded. Product description is one of the fields it records, with the value before and after each change.
- Open the Changes page and search the product's name, or a few words from the old text. Search covers the change summary, the item's name, field names and values.
- Open the change for the description.
- Read the old value and the new value side by side.
The change also shows who made it, when Shopify reports it, beside a confidence word, or Unknown. That is a match by record and time and is worth a conversation, not a conclusion.
Put it back
A product's description is one of the 15 fields Actorly can restore, and the free plan's one monthly restore covers it. Choose Restore this value on the change. Then:
- Actorly asks Shopify what the description is now.
- It checks nobody has edited it since you opened the restore. If they have, it stops and changes nothing.
- You confirm the exact text to be put back.
- Actorly writes that one field.
- It asks Shopify again, and checks the text Shopify holds matches the text it wrote. Only then does it say Restored.
- The result is recorded in your history as an Actorly action.
If Actorly cannot confirm the value after writing, it tells you and asks you to look at the product in Shopify before trying again. Do that, and do not assume it worked.
What if it was not there before you installed
Then Actorly cannot show it. The record starts at install. Your fallback is the CSV export, a backup you made yourself, or the text from a copy such as a supplier sheet or a cached page. This is a good reason to export your products now, even if you never need it. See Is Actorly a backup? for what each tool keeps.
What is recorded about the restore itself
The restore is written to your history as an Actorly action, whether it worked or not. It never claims who made the original change. So the history shows two things in order: the original edit, with its name and confidence word where Shopify reported one, then the restore, labelled Actorly. If the restore stopped at a check, that is recorded too.
If the text you need was on a page or a blog post
Actorly also tracks pages, blogs and articles, and shows the old and new value of their changes, but it does not put those back. Restore covers the 15 fields on the list, and a page, blog or article is not one of them. For those, copy the old text from the change and paste it into the editor yourself. These parts are checked on a schedule, weekly on Watch and daily on Restore, so a change can take longer to appear.
Other fields work the same way
The same flow covers a product's title, status, vendor, product type, theme template and tags. Tags are a special case: restoring tags overwrites the whole tag list, and Actorly shows which current tags would be removed before you confirm. Product status needs Actorly Restore, the paid plan. See pricing and the docs on restoring.
Frequently asked questions
Can I revert a product description in Shopify?
Shopify's product pages do not describe reverting a saved description. Use an earlier export or a copy of the text, or restore it with Actorly if it was installed before the edit.
Does restoring a description change anything else?
No. A restore changes one field of one record and nothing else.
What if someone edited it again after I opened the restore?
Actorly stops and changes nothing, so it does not overwrite an edit you have not seen. Look at what changed, then try again.
Is there a limit on restores?
On Actorly Watch, the free plan, there is one restore a month, counted over the last 30 days. Actorly Restore, $29 a month or $240 a year, includes unlimited restores.
Can I restore descriptions in bulk?
No. Bulk restore does not exist. Each restore is one field at a time. For the wider picture see Can you undo a change in Shopify?