Getting the Shopify key that moves your store

What the key is, and why you make it yourself

Shopify does not hand out a password that lets another service read your store. Instead, you create a small app on your own store, tick exactly what it may read, and Shopify gives that app a token. You paste the token into Omniterra and it reads your catalogue through it.

Two things follow from that, and both are in your favour:

• You decide what we can see. The permissions you tick are the only ones we get. We ask for read access, nothing that writes to your Shopify store.
• You can cut it off at any moment. Delete the app in Shopify and the token stops working immediately, with no email to anyone.

Your Shopify store keeps running the whole time. Nothing we do changes it.

Step 1 — open the app settings

In your Shopify admin, go to Settings → Apps and sales channels → Develop apps.

If you see a button saying Allow custom app development, press it. Shopify asks once per store, and only the store owner can do it.

Step 2 — create the app

Press Create an app, give it a name you will recognise later — "Omniterra migration" does the job — and confirm.

The app is empty at this point. It cannot read anything yet.

Step 3 — tick the permissions

Open the Configuration tab, then Admin API integration → Edit.

Tick read access for everything you want to bring over:

Press Save.

Omniterra shows you this exact list on the import screen too, ready to copy, and tells you which ones are still missing if the connection comes back short.

Step 4 — install the app and copy the token

Go to the API credentials tab and press Install app.

Shopify now shows the Admin API access token, a string starting with `shpat_`. Copy it.

Read this part carefully: Shopify shows that token once. If you close the page without copying it, you cannot see it again — you have to uninstall and reinstall the app to get a new one. It is not lost work, but it is an annoying five minutes.

Step 5 — paste it into Omniterra

In your Omniterra admin, go to Products → Import / Export, choose Shopify, type your store address (`my-store.myshopify.com`) and paste the token.

Press Connect. We read your catalogue and show you what we found before anything is written: how many products, customers, orders, pages. Nothing moves until you say so.

If it says permissions are missing

This one surprises people, so it is worth knowing in advance: Shopify reports the permissions that were granted when the app was installed, not what the configuration says now. If you tick more boxes after installing, the app keeps the old, narrower access.

The fix is to reinstall: Configuration → Admin API integration → Edit, tick what is missing, Save, then API credentials → Reinstall app. The token stays the same.

If you built the app in the Dev Dashboard instead

Some stores have an app made at `dev.shopify.com` rather than inside the store admin. The idea is the same, with two extra details:

1. Edit `access_scopes` in the app configuration and press Save.
2. Press Release. Without a release, your change stays an unpublished version and the store never sees it.
3. Reinstall the app on the store, so the new permissions are actually granted.

What moves, and what cannot

Products with their variants, images, collections, customers, orders, discounts, pages, blog posts, menus, redirects and files all come across.

Some things cannot move, and we tell you which before you start rather than after: gift card codes (Shopify never exposes them), saved card details (they belong to your payment provider, not your store), and installed third-party apps with the data they keep inside themselves.

If fewer products arrive than you expected

Three things explain almost every case, and none of them means the import failed.

Drafts and archived products stay behind by default. Shopify keeps them out of the active catalogue, and so do we. If you want them, publish them in Shopify before you run the import, or import them and set them to draft here afterwards.

Products with no price or no variant are skipped, because they cannot be sold as they are. They appear in the report at the end, by name, so you can see exactly which ones and why.

A permission you ticked after installing does not apply until you reinstall the app; that is the same trap as above. Reinstall, then press Re-check in the import screen — we read your catalogue again without touching anything already brought over.

Run the import twice if you need to. Products are matched by their Shopify handle, so a second pass updates what is already here instead of creating duplicates.

How long it takes

A catalogue of a few hundred products is usually done in a couple of minutes. Large stores run in batches and you can leave the page — the import carries on and you can watch its progress when you come back.