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Add your data source to upload your entire catalog of products to Pinterest as product Pins.

Once your first data source has been approved, you can add up to 50 data sources to your business account to promote your products across different markets, languages and currencies.

Make sure you’ve read our guide to getting started with retail catalogs, where we outline formatting options and hosting requirements for your data source.

Add your data source

You can provide the URL for your hosted data source, or you can manually upload your data source.

The first data source on an account has to be added by the account owner. If you have admin level access or catalogs level access to another person’s account, you can add additional data sources after the first has been approved.

Once you’ve selected your data source’s country and language, you will not be able to update these details later. The country should reflect where your products are being sold, as it will inform where your Pins are distributed. This means that Pins you create using your data source will be visible to people on Pinterest in this country.

  1. Log in to your Pinterest business account from your desktop.
  2. Click the hamburger icon at the top-left of the page.
  3. Under Business, click Catalogs and product groups.
  4. Click Add data source.
  5. Click the Provide URL link tab.
  6. Fill in the details for your data source:
    • Below Name, provide a name for your data source.
    • Below Feed URL, enter your data source URL.
    • Below File format, select your file’s format type.
    • Below Country/region, select the place where your items are sold.
    • Below Language, select the language of the content in your data source.
    • Below Feed login details, enter the Username and Password if your data source requires credentials. This is optional because not all feeds require these.
    • Below Default currency, select the currency of your products.
    • Below Default availability, select the default availability setting for your products.
    • Below Time and Time zone, select the time you’d like your feed ingested. This is optional but lets you schedule your feed ingestion.
  7. Click Test your data source. This is optional but we recommend you test your data source so you know it’s functioning correctly.
  8. Paste the piece of data source you want to test, including the header, into the box.
  9. Click Validate data source.
    • If there are errors, they’ll appear below the box. Follow the instructions below What to do to fix them.
    • If there are no errors, click the chevron left icon next to Test your data source to return to your data source details.
  10. Click Create Pins.

You’ll receive an email from Pinterest about the status of your data source.

Tips for hosted data sources

To make sure everything goes smoothly, remember the following:

  • URLs for hosted data sources must begin with http://, https://, ftp://, or sftp://. Include the full filepath and no credentials in the URL. We accept compressed files (.zip, .giz, .gz, .bz2 and others), but we currently do not support encrypted, password-protected compressed files, Google Drive files, or Dropbox files.
  • We ingest your data source once every 24 hours. Make your updated full data source available daily to keep your product details up-to-date. Scheduled data source updates are available, but on-demand ingestion is not supported at this time.
  • Host your own data source on an FTP/SFTP server or with an HTTP/HTTPS direct-download link. This needs to be accessible by a user-agent, and cannot require IP or SSH key whitelisting. If you're using a direct download link, there cannot be any extra navigation required for Pinterest to access the file. We do not provide data source hosting.
  • We can process up to 20 million products per feed. If your data source (feed) has more than 20 million products, we'll process the first 20 million rows. To process more than 20 million rows for your catalog, contact your account manager.
  • When changing the image for a product, update the image URL to a different one. If you do not update the image URL, the image change will not be recognized.
  1. Log in to your Pinterest business account from your desktop.
  2. Click the hamburger icon at the top-left of the page.
  3. Under Business, click Catalogs and product groups.
  4. Click Add data source.
  5. Click the Upload manually tab.
  6. Fill in the details for your data source:
    • Below Name, provide a name for your data source.
    • Below Country/region, select the place where your items are sold. You will not be able to update this later.
    • Below Language, select the language of the content in your data source.
    • Below Default currency, select the currency of your products.
  7. Click Choose a file to select your data source from your desktop, or drag and drop your data source into the box.
  8. Click Test your data source. This is optional but we recommend you test your data source so you know it’s functioning correctly.
  9. Paste the piece of data source you want to test, including the header, into the box.
  10. Click Validate data source.
    • If there are errors, they’ll appear below the box. Follow the instructions below What to do to fix them.
    • If there are no errors, click the chevron left icon next to Test your data source to return to your data source details.
  11. Click Upload data source.

Tips for manually uploaded data sources

To make sure everything goes smoothly, remember the following:

  • Update your data source every seven days or else your products will not be organically distributed across Pinterest. If your data source has not been updated for 90 days, your products will not be distributed across ads on Pinterest either. 
  • Update the original data source, then upload it to Pinterest again instead of creating a brand new data source every week.
  • Do not include item IDs from other data sources you’ve already uploaded, as these will appear as an error when you’re reviewing your catalog’s issues.
  • When changing the image for a product, update the image URL to a different one. If you do not update the image URL, the image change will not be recognized.
Delete a data source

You can only delete a data source if you’re the account owner or if you have admin level access or catalog level access to the account. Data sources cannot be deleted if they have yet to be approved or if they’re connected to a campaign that is active, paused or about to start.

If you delete your data source, all related products and product groups will be removed from your account. This cannot be reversed. To temporarily pause your data feed, click the toggle next to Pause. You can reactivate a paused data source later.

If people on Pinterest have already saved Pins from your data source, deleting your data source will not delete the Pins saved to their boards.

  1. Log in to your Pinterest business account from your desktop
  2. Click the hamburger icon at the top-left of the page
  3. Under Business, click Catalogs and product groups
  4. Below Actions, click the ellipsis icon next to the data source you want to delete
  5. Click Delete
  6. Click Delete to confirm
Unapproved data sources

If you’ve added your data source and the status is Not approved, click View Issues to see more information.

If you’ve reviewed the issues and can fix your data source, make the suggested changes. If you’re using a hosted data source, wait for the next daily ingestion to check on its status. If you’re manually uploading a data source, upload it again once you’ve made the changes.

If you’ve reviewed the issues and believe that your data source has been set up correctly, you can appeal the decision.

  1. Log in to your Pinterest business account from your desktop
  2. Click the hamburger icon at the top-left of the page
  3. Under Business, click Catalogs and product groups
  4. Select the data source you want to appeal
  5. Below Actions, click View issues
  6. Fill out the form explaining what changes you’ve made, then click Submit

Once an appeal has been submitted, you’ll hear back via email, as well as review the result of your appeal on your Catalogs page.

Troubleshoot data source error messages

We use messages to let you know if something went wrong with product Pin creation or if we have a recommendation for you. There are three different message types you can expect:

  • File-level error: Your entire data source may fail ingestion if your data source has any file-level errors.
  • Product-level error: If your product has failing errors, the product will not create product Pins.
  • Product-level alert: Products with alerts will still create product Pins but we recommend you adjust the product data to avoid warnings.
    1. Log in to your Pinterest business account from your desktop.
    2. Click the hamburger icon at the top-left of the page.
    3. Under Business, click Catalogs and product groups.
    4. Click the name of the data source you want to troubleshoot.
    5. Click View issues below Actions. You’ll see a description of the issue and instructions for what to do.
    6. Click the chevron down icon next to the error or alert number to see a list of items affected by the same issue.
    7. Click View more affected items to see the full list of affected items.
    8. Click the chevron down icon next to the titles of the items to view more information.
    What's next?

    Once your products are on Pinterest, organize them into product groups to manage your catalog, run ad campaigns and track performance on Pinterest.

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