By default CTX Feed follows WooCommerce’s own visibility rules, so products you’ve hidden from the catalog — and out-of-stock products on a store that hides them — never reach a feed. That’s usually what you want, but sometimes you need those items in the feed anyway: for channels that keep listings live through a stockout, for remarketing catalogs, or when you’d rather report accurate availability than drop the product. CTX Feed has toggles that override the default and put those products back into the feed.
This feature requires CTX Feed Pro. On the free plugin the Product eligibility toggles on the Filters tab are shown as a locked preview and are not applied to the feed. The default behaviour described below — leaving out hidden products, and out-of-stock products when your store hides them — applies on the free plugin too.
Why products go missing in the first place
Two separate WooCommerce mechanisms can drop a product before it ever reaches a feed:
- Catalog visibility = Hidden. When you edit a product and set its Catalog visibility to Hidden, WooCommerce keeps it out of the shop and search. CTX Feed excludes hidden products from feeds by default, to match what shoppers see. Products set to Shop only or Search results only are not affected — they stay in the feed.
- Hide out of stock items. Under WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Inventory there is a Hide out of stock items option. With it on, out-of-stock products disappear from your catalog — and CTX Feed respects that in the feed too.
A single product can be affected by either mechanism, or both at once (hidden and out of stock). Knowing which one is dropping your product tells you which toggle to flip.
Include hidden products
To bring products whose catalog visibility is Hidden back into the feed:
- Open CTX Feed → Manage Feeds and edit the feed.
- Go to the Filters tab.
- In Product eligibility, turn Include hidden products ON.
- Click Save & generate.
- Include hidden products — puts Hidden products back into this feed.
- Override out-of-stock visibility — appears once Include hidden products is ON and Remove out-of-stock products is OFF.
Hidden-visibility products are now written to this feed. This changes nothing in WooCommerce — the products stay hidden in your shop; only this feed includes them.
Keep out-of-stock products in the feed
Getting out-of-stock items to stay in the feed takes two settings working together:
- Remove out-of-stock products must be OFF. If it’s on, out-of-stock items are dropped no matter what else you set.
- Turn Override out-of-stock visibility ON. This tells CTX Feed to ignore the store’s Hide out of stock items setting so out-of-stock products still enter the feed.
The Override out-of-stock visibility card only appears after you’ve set Remove out-of-stock products to No and Include hidden products to Yes — that combination is exactly the “keep everything, even hidden and out-of-stock” case, so the last toggle only shows up when it’s relevant. Once it’s on, click Save & generate. If you later turn Include hidden products off again, the Override card disappears but its saved setting still applies — turn Override off first if you no longer want it.
When to use this — and when not to
- Good reasons to include out-of-stock or hidden items: a channel or partner that wants your full range even during short stockouts; a catalog where you manage availability with the availability field rather than by pulling items; or internal/reference feeds.
- Be careful on Google Shopping and Meta. These channels expect the availability field to reflect reality — they don’t want out-of-stock items presented as buyable. The recommended approach there is to keep the product in the feed and let CTX Feed report its real stock status in the availability field (in stock / out of stock), rather than hiding it. CTX Feed maps WooCommerce stock status to each channel’s availability attribute automatically, so an accurate feed is usually better than a dropped listing that loses its history.
Troubleshooting
- A hidden product is still missing. The two checks are independent: if it’s also out of stock on a store that hides out-of-stock items, you need Override out-of-stock visibility as well as Include hidden products. Also check its status — draft and private products are controlled by Product status under Product selection, which sends published products only unless you add other statuses.
- Out-of-stock products still aren’t included. Confirm Remove out-of-stock products is OFF and Override out-of-stock visibility is ON, then regenerate.
- The toggles are greyed out. On the free plugin the Product eligibility toggles are locked; they require CTX Feed Pro.
Related guides
- How to Remove Out of Stock Products from Feed
- How to Filter Products
- How to Make a Feed for Specific Categories
