Bringing a full catalog into a fresh or test store - to try a new theme against real product data, stage a redesign, or set up a duplicate for a second brand - carries an obvious risk: accidentally publishing someone else’s (or your own live store’s) products before you’re ready.

The Shopify import CSV format this tool produces sets Published: FALSE and Status: draft on every single product, unconditionally. There’s no setting to turn that off - it’s a deliberate safety default, not an option, because an import should never be the thing that makes a catalog go live.

Import the file under Settings → Products → Import on the new store, review what came in, and publish only the products you actually want visible.

This is also useful well outside of a full migration: pulling one competitor’s product line into a private test store, just to see how it would look with your own theme, is a completely reasonable use - and the draft-only default means nothing about that test is ever publicly visible to a shopper.