Keep Microsoft Merchant Center ids unique across feeds

What does the required-fields group actually name?

The product-attributes page opens its required group with description, id, image_link, link, price, shipping, and title. description is the item description, max 10000 characters, no HTML, no promotional text, and not enclosed in quotes. The example is a dress shirt sentence. id is a unique identifier, max 50 Unicode characters. The page recommends ASCII letters, numbers, underscores, and dashes, and it also says special ASCII characters are allowed. The id must be unique for each item in the feed per market. If you have multiple feeds, ids across those feeds still need to be unique. The id is the merchant product ID. The page’s example is ISI1. title is max 150 characters and should not be enclosed in quotes. The example is Women's shoes. price is a number plus an ISO 4217 currency, from 0.00 to 10000000.00, with two decimal places and no currency symbol. The example is 23.99 USD. For the United States, exclude tax. For the United Kingdom, include VAT. link is the direct product URL, HTTP or HTTPS, 0 to 2000 characters. image_link is one image URL.

shipping is the exception inside that group. The page says it is a required field for Austria and Germany only. Headers it names are shipping(price), shipping(country:price), shipping(country:service:price), and shipping. Values use a colon inside a group and a comma between groups. The page’s example of several prices on one item is DE:Standard:10, DE:Express:20, and DE:Same Day:30. A matching header example is DE:Standard:12.99 for shipping(country:service:price). Free shipping uses 0. This page does not add shipping to a United States or United Kingdom row, because the required sentence names Austria and Germany.

The next group is required only if the manufacturer assigned the value. It names brand, gtin, identifier_exists, and mpn. identifier_exists is required for new products only when gtin and brand, or mpn and brand, are not available, and the values are TRUE or FALSE. This page does not reprint the apparel, variant, other, Bing, sales, or UCP tables. availability is in the optional Other group, with values in stock, out of stock, and preorder, and a default of in stock. It is not in the required group, so this page does not call it required. The field list here is the required group plus that identification condition. It is partial against the whole article.

Which file can hold those columns?

The organizing page says the feed file must be tab-delimited plain text with extensions TXT, ZIP, GZ, GZIP, TAR.GZ, or TGZ. XML is supported only when it is an existing Google-formatted XML file. The file name cannot contain spaces and can have at most 50 characters. That 50 is the file name. The id limit of 50 Unicode characters is a different limit. The file starts with one header row. Each product is on its own line. The product’s ID must be in the column whose header is id. Do not put HTML in the text file, trailing tabs at the end of lines, or tabs or line breaks in the middle of an offer attribute.

A feed expires after 30 days. The page says you then need to update the feed file, and that a daily upload is good practice. A supplemental feed can update values for a Product ID that already exists. It cannot add or delete products. The fields that page says supplemental feeds currently support are Product ID, which is required, custom label 0 through 4, Title, Description, Promotion ID, Size, and Color. The supplemental feed’s Feed label, or Country of sale, and Language must match the primary feed.

How do you map the feed without uploading it?

1. In Microsoft Advertising, open Tools, then Merchant Center, then Feeds. Create a primary feed for the country of sale. The organizing page also lists a test-only setting. Enabling testing on an existing feed deletes previously submitted offers. Leave that setting off unless you want that deletion.
2. In Golanto, choose Microsoft Merchant Center. Record the market, the feed name, and the date you read the two articles. The mapper still opens on Amazon until you change the platform.
3. Map your SKU to the column headed id. If another feed in the same market already uses that id for a different item, pick a different id. The attributes page says ids across feeds still have to be unique.
4. Save tab-delimited text. Put shipping on the row only when the market is Austria or Germany, and use one of the header shapes the attributes page prints. Do not enclose title or description in quotes. The attributes page says not to.
5. Upload from Merchant Center, or by the input method you selected there. Golanto does not submit the feed. A Google-formatted XML file is a separate case the organizing page allows only when that XML already exists. This page does not rebuild Google’s columns as the Microsoft header.

Worked example

The same Microsoft id was reused in a second feed

id	title
MUG-350	Stoneware mug

This is a synthetic tab-delimited sketch. The attributes page’s own id example is ISI1 and its title example is Women's shoes. If another feed for the same market already uses MUG-350, this row needs a different id. shipping is omitted because the required sentence names Austria and Germany only. description, image_link, link, and price are in the required group and are not in this sketch. Do not upload the sketch.

Official references

• Microsoft Advertising: Product attributes (opens in a new tab)
• Microsoft Advertising: Creating and organizing feed files (opens in a new tab)

Schema review: microsoft-merchant-feed-2026-11-02. Examples are synthetic. Store-specific and unpublished requirements are outside these checks.

Common questions

Continue reading

• Why a CSV opens as one column
• Map a product file to a marketplace template
• Marketplace file guides