Cleaning up PrestaShop sample data is a multi-step process.
There is no automated way to clean up demo data right from the PrestaShop back office. There was an addon for the previous PrestaShop version (v1.6) to clean up, but it is now gone from v1.7 and any future versions. So the cleanup of any sample data should be done manually within the back office.
In this article, we will go through all the steps that should take you no more than 2 minutes to launch your site for production.
First, let’s start with the demo data/products you get from the installation process, but feel free to jump any section from the table of contents block below:
- How to disable demo mode in PrestaShop back office
- How demo data was removed in earlier PrestaShop versions
- How to delete sample customers from PrestaShop
- How to delete sample orders from PrestaShop
- How to delete demo products from PrestaShop
- How to delete demo categories from PrestaShop
- How to delete demo data from PrestaShop database
- How to install PrestaShop with demo products
- How to test PrestaShop without installing demo data
How to disable demo mode in PrestaShop back office
You might see some demo stats in the PrestaShop back office with already sold equipment, return or exchange metrics, abandoned carts, and more.
These are just for you to explore and preview how it will look when you have a running store.
This data is not installed into your database and can be disabled with the “demo mode” checkbox on the top right corner:
You can toggle the demo mode checkbox multiple times; it won’t do any harm to your production site data.
Now let’s dive into the products and all other data cleanup.
How demo data was removed in earlier PrestaShop versions
Manually removing categories, products, orders, and more can take some time. Also, you might miss and leave something hanging in production. This would be unprofessional.
The older PrestaShop version (1.6) had its own official cleaner module, but it is now deprecated and should not be used.
This addon in the past raised lots of concerns. Many internet users complained that it ruined their stores, dropped menus, or messed up settings. Also, an investigation into the source code left some concerns that some cleanup functionality were not even implemented – for example, removing product images from the file storage.
The only option to completely cleanup PrestaShop demo data is to remove customers, categories, products, and orders manually. This can all be done from the back office.
How to delete sample customers from PrestaShop
Go to the back office, click on Customers, check the top-left checkbox below the Bulk Actions dropdown, and then from dropdown, click on Delete selected:
Once customers are removed, it is a good time to remove orders.
How to delete sample orders from PrestaShop
If you head over to the Orders section, you will see that the same Bulk Actions dropdown does not have a delete option.
This is because it is illegal to remove payment, ordering, and invoice information from any business in Europe.
You have to cancel orders instead. So yes, you will end up with orders still displayed in your back office, but if you follow this guide until the end – we will show you how to clean those up fully.
So check the top-left checkbox to select all orders, then choose Change Order Status from the Bulk actions dropdown.
In the new popup, select Cancelled and click Update:
Next, move to the Customer Service tab, select Order Messages, and choose Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown:
We are almost there!
Let’s remove products, and then, technically, you are ready to launch your store.
How to delete demo products from PrestaShop
On the Catalog and Products back office page, you will find an entire page of demo products. The view for bulk selection is a little bit different.
Check Select All checkbox in the top-left corner and from Bulk actions choose Delete selection. This will wipe products data from your store.
Some related data after this point won’t be removed.
If you open the Catalog sidebar menu and click on Attributes & Features, you might see product features like Size or Color. Review those and only remove what you are not going to use (like Paper type).
For this page (Attributes & Features), the Bulk actions will be on the bottom.
Now move to Brands & Suppliers in the same Catalog sidebar. Also, select everything there, and with Bulk Actions dropdown – remove.
Only the categories will be left to remove after this step.
How to delete demo categories from PrestaShop
In the Catalog menu sidebar, click Categories, select All Categories, and from Bulk actions, click on Delete selected:
This will wipe all the data you saw in the Catalog → Monitoring section.
How to delete demo data from PrestaShop database
If you have access to the database (like PHPMyAdmin access), you can wipe all the data, including orders, in just few seconds with the following query:
DELETE FROM orders;
DELETE FROM product;
DELETE FROM feature;
DELETE FROM group;
DELETE FROM category;
DELETE FROM address;
DELETE FROM manufacturer; Of course, you should never run these queries above on the production site.
This query is not perfect as it still will leave some data hanging “in the air”. That is because a database is a complex thing, and usually, one metadata type (like the product) holds lots of different metadata in other tables, like product_features.
So it would be best to remove all the data from every table with the words product, manufacturer, address, group.
How to install PrestaShop with demo products
Many people are coming to this article looking for the exact opposite – how to install demo data to explore PrestaShop features. So this section is for them as it is highly related to this topic.
In the PrestaShop install window, there is a checkbox to install demo products:
It is a great way to explore PrestaShop features as you will test stores with descriptions, SEO, and product variants.
You can even try out the entire checkout process, but you won’t be able to do this without products.
Not sure if you enabled this checkbox in the installation window? Check your homepage, and if you see something like this for PrestaShop 1.7 – then you will know that you have it enabled:
So by now, you should know how you can get demo products on your store, but what about demo stats in the back office?
How to test PrestaShop without installing demo data
Leave the checkbox in the installation window unchecked for sample products installation. There are better ways to test PrestaShop without ruining your store.
We have created PrestaShop v1.7 and PrestaShop v1.6 demo stores.
You can explore the front and back office in minutes and decide if PrestaShop is worth it. It is!