Content maintenance: the Maintenance Hub, bulk exports, and exception lists

Supplier One's Maintenance Hub changes items that already exist; the Setup Hub (Item setup covers it) is for new ones. For a few fields on one item, open it from the Catalog, choose its product and offer overview, and edit the attribute group there — nothing to export or upload. For many items, use the bulk loop:

1. Export a maintenance spreadsheet for the items you need. Online content lives in the Product Content & Site Experience export; other export types cover item configuration and supply chain, imagery, and rich media.
2. Edit the attributes in Excel.
3. Upload the file back through the Maintenance Hub.
4. Check the submission in the Submissions Manager (older guides: Activity Manager or Activity Monitor), item by item.
5. Verify the result on Walmart.com.

Exports take a few thousand items each (5,000 at the time of writing), but the cap and export names change, so check the export page. Before touching the file, save an untouched copy: your before-snapshot, the only clean record of what Walmart held when you started.

The upload ignores row order: it matches each row to an existing item by the template's identifier column. The Product Content & Site Experience spreadsheet is keyed at the GTIN level (Supplier catalog covers it) whichever ID type you pasted to build the export; the item configuration and supply chain spreadsheet keys on the Walmart item number. That column is the match key; confirm it on the template's Data Definitions tab, because a wrong, blank or duplicated key sends your edit nowhere or to the wrong item.

Keys usually break in Excel:

• Long numbers switch to scientific notation and lose digits; format identifier columns as text.
• Leading zeros vanish from a GTIN opened as a number: a 12-digit UPC starting with 0 becomes 11 digits.
• Sorting part of a sheet shifts values out of their rows.
• Deleting or renaming template header rows breaks the file.

Treat identifier columns as read-only, and check both sides for blank and duplicated keys first: a duplicate may match the wrong row; a blank returns nothing, which is not "no difference".

Bulk maintenance compares your source of truth (Supplier catalog covers it) with what Walmart holds. Compare like for like: the same attribute, unit, and packaging level. Convert units before comparing (mL to mL, inches to inches) and keep the conversion visible. Sort each row into three buckets:

1. Match — no action.
2. Mismatch — both sides have a value and they differ. A correction.
3. Missing — one side has no record or no value. An investigation: the item may not be set up, may sit under another supplier number, or may be filtered out.

Edit only the columns you intend to change, and only on mismatch rows. Leave every other cell exactly as exported — a blank cell can mean "no change" in one template and "clear this value" in another, so read the template's Data Definitions tab before emptying anything. Once the submission is complete, export the same items again and compare against your before-snapshot: that, not the upload confirmation, proves what changed.

Each submission in the Submissions Manager has a Submission ID and a status saying whose move it is — System Processing, Supplier or Walmart Action Required, Complete or Discarded (labels at the time of writing; Item setup covers the groupings) — plus per-item results and, on validation errors, an error file with reasons. Errors are field-specific: fix those rows and re-upload under the same Submission ID, so the fix stays with it.

Some edits wait at Walmart Action Required for a Walmart associate — the department's merchant (the buyer) or Walmart's content team, depending on the attribute; no published list says which edits need approval; read the status. Read-only (gray) cells you cannot change: leave them as exported and raise the change as Issue resolution says — a ticket for a locked field, the merchant only for a structural or assortment decision. Complete means Walmart accepted the data, not that the page shows it; allow Walmart's processing window (about two days at the time of writing), then check sample live pages; record right, page wrong is Issue resolution's job.

The output of maintenance work is an exception list: one row per difference with the item reference (GTIN and Walmart item number), the field, the current value, the intended value, and the source that supports the change. After the upload, add each row's result and, where it did not apply, the Submissions Manager's reason and the next action — correct and re-upload, send to the merchant, or open a ticket.

The list does three jobs. It feeds the next upload directly, since every row holds the key and the intended value. It is the record you show a merchant or support when a value is disputed. And it closes the loop: a row leaves the list only when the attribute is verified on the record or the live page. A vague "some capacities are wrong" is not an exception list; neither is an upload file with no reasons.