Products stock status change after csv import

Question

For some reason my out-of-stock products reappear as 'in stock' whenever I update the product by a csv import.

Even if I import a single column; the 'sku' column, the affected products suddenly appear in stock.

I don't want imports to affect the stock level, as I'm constantly updating products via csv on a live store. I have intentionally left out all qty or stock related columns on my import sheets.

Does anyone know why this is happening? Is it an intended feature, a bug, or configurable? Stock management is enabled in config, and all products use config settings for stock management. I'm using Magento 2.1.7

Answer 1

So Backorders were enabled in my Magento admin inventory config, and this seems to ALWAYS set my products 'In stock' after a csv update. Disabling backorders stopped this behaviour.

However, note that products are still automatically set as 'In stock' if quantity is higher than the out-of-stock treshold, even if stock is not changed by the import. I guess it's the stock re-indexing that causes this.