Length of the description has exceeded the maximum limit.

[dmhavlik]

I am unable to complete a listing because I received the notice: "The length of the description has exceeded the maximum limit." I have deleted some information but still receive the same notice upon a retry. This has not been a I problem I have encountered in the past. I can't find any information on the eBay site indicating what the maximum limit is for the description. Please help.

[shipscript]

@dmhavlik 

eBay allows 500,000 characters, which encompasses all the seller-description HTML coding. The content of your listing is not the problem. The problem is all the MS office junk-code at the top of the listing. If you switch to the HTML view of eBay's listing editor, you will see that most of the listing code, starting at the top, looks like this:

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
 <o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
  <o:AllowPNG/>
 </o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
 <w:WordDocument>
  <w:View>Normal</w:View>
  <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
  <w:TrackMoves/>
  <w:TrackFormatting/>
  <w:PunctuationKerning/>
  <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
  <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
  <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
  <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
     :
     :
     :
	mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
	mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
	mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
	mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
	mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
	mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;
	mso-font-kerning:1.0pt;
	mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}
</style>
<![endif]-->

Looking at your first listing, I showed just a bit from the top and then a bit where the code ends (above). After that, you'll see HTML that includes text that you will recognize, as below. It starts with <p class...

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:107%;font-family:
&quot;Arial&quot;,sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;;mso-font-kerning:
0pt;mso-ligatures:none">This listing is for:</span> .....

To solve your problem, delete all of that stuff shown in the first code box. That will be MOST of the code displayed in HTML view. Then leave the remainder, that looks like the second code box. Your actual description is just a pittance, compared to Mso code.

In the future, to strip off that Mso code, export or save your MS Office description as something like "Web page, filtered" and then copy that text into the listing editor. Or, paste your description into a plain text editor like Notepad, or even Wordpad. Then copy from there and paste into eBay's description editor. From there, you can use eBay's text-styling tool, if desired.

[dmhavlik]

Thank you so much for your help. I had to show your response to my more tech savvy spouse to understand what to do. I ended up pasting the Word Document text into Notepad and then pasting that content into eBay per your suggestion. It didn't work the first time on a saved draft (got the same error). I assumed the saved draft was corrupted somehow so I created a new clean draft. That worked, so I duplicated the process for the remainder of the listings I needed to complete. A lot of rework today, but I know what to do going forward. Thank you again.