[Resolved] Unlocking SKU Field on Translated Products
This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.
Problem: You are running a WooCommerce website with products in English and Greek, and you want to have different SKUs for the Greek products. However, the SKU field is locked on the Greek version of the products, as WPML forces the SKU to be copied from the original language. Solution: Unfortunately, WooCommerce Multilingual does not support independent SKU editing for translated products as you described. If you need to recreate products in bulk with different SKUs, you can use the default WooCommerce export/import tool. For more details on exporting, visit WPML export and import documentation. If your workflow requires a different approach, you may need to develop a custom solution, possibly by hooking into our functionality or creating a custom SKU field that behaves according to your specific needs.
If this solution does not apply to your case, or if it seems outdated, we highly recommend checking related known issues at https://wpml.org/known-issues/, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. Should you need further assistance, please open a new support ticket at WPML support forum.
This is the technical support forum for WPML - the multilingual WordPress plugin.
Everyone can read, but only WPML clients can post here. WPML team is replying on the forum 6 days per week, 22 hours per day.
Background of the issue:
We are running a WooCommerce website with products in English and Greek. Products were first created in English and then translated to Greek using WPML. We would like to have different SKUs for the Greek products compared to the English ones.
Symptoms:
On the Greek version of the products, the SKU field is locked. WPML forces the SKU to be copied from the original language.
Questions:
Could you please advise on the correct way to configure WPML so that the _sku field can be edited independently per language, without affecting other product synchronization settings?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: Europe/Madrid (GMT+02:00)
Hello Panagiotis,
Currently, in our WooCommerce Add-On, the SKU field is intentionally locked and synchronized across all product translations. This is because SKUs are directly tied to WooCommerce stock management and order processing, and allowing independent SKUs per language would break this consistency.
If you need different SKUs for each language, the solution is to create the Greek products as separate products rather than WPML translations of the English ones. This way, each product is fully independent, and you can assign unique SKUs without conflict. The trade-off is that these products won’t be linked as “translations” in WPML, but they will work correctly in WooCommerce with their own stock, identifiers, and SKUs.
I understand this may not be the solution you were hoping for. However, at this time, creating separate products is the stable and recommended approach. Any other setup may lead to unexpected issues, since the plugin is designed to keep SKUs locked for compatibility with WooCommerce core and dozens of third-party extensions that rely on this behavior.
This is simply not the ideal solution for us, as we have 900+ products and it’s not realistic to recreate them all from scratch for the Greek language. We do not care about stock in the Greek version, so SKUs are not needed there.
The reason we need this is because the English and German versions of the website are linked to our inventory management system, which automatically updates stock on the website. However, when we translate products, the SKUs are also being translated, and as a result, the stock levels are updated on the Greek version too. This is exactly what we want to avoid — SKUs should not be translated on the Greek version.
Beyond this, there’s unfortunately not much more we can offer, as the functionality you’re requesting does not exist. The tool is not intended to work in that way: a translated product is treated as a copy, which requires a different SKU. Think of it like purchasing a book in different languages or an electronic device with different power plugs depending on the market—each variation needs its own SKU.
If your workflow requires a different approach, you may need to develop a custom solution. This could involve hooking into our functionality or creating a custom SKU field that behaves according to your specific needs, such for example the ISBN number for books.
