My text is turning to ALL BOLD!

[knownobob]

I am updating my listings today. I have variations. So, I describe each item by putting bold to the variation name, then the description in regular style. When I make updates and list my item all of the text is bold. Is anyone else experiencing this? Anyone know the fix? Here are two I updated tonight that are doing it. I am 110% sure that when I hit "revise" on the listing that the bold and regular text were separated for all variations. I redid the falcon one so I could be 200% double dog sure. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/114895062593

https://www.ebay.com/itm/113915669336

I'm an experienced seller. I do the same thing over and over again. If you think it is a user error please ignore this post instead of commenting. Thank you...

[knownobob]

Ok, I deleted the entire thing, repasted it, set the bold how I like it, and the update worked this time! Yeah. Note that the control shift V did not work in the ebay editor to unbold things, but it did work in Word. I didn't quickly see how to view the html code and can't spend much time on it now so I don't know if it still looks crazy in there or not. I am not copying from another editor, this is updated over and over again in the ebay editor as I add the parts back and update the description to match. Though now I am tempted to copy/paste from Word if that is better. 

Yeah, probably since it was a duplicate post they just removed it. The conversation here started poorly so I went there. But as people woke up this morning it took a turn in the right direction. 

[wastingtime101]

Copy/pasting from Word will pull in rich text with formatting which you do not want.

Instead you should use Notepad (PC) or TextEdit (Mac) and in the menu options change the format to "plain text" and use that.

Making continual updates in the eBay editor will exacerbate extraneous code since you're already starting with rich text.

Start with plain text on new listings. On old listings maybe update them as you make other edits but don't go crazy trying to clean up everything at once.

[knownobob]

Thank you great tips. Just to be clear, I have never copied from Word, notepad, or any other editor into ebay. I have always and only used the ebay editor. Due to this current bug I am inclined to clean them up with each update using the notepad editor as you suggested, but since this issue occurs on all of the listings I updated last night it is an ebay glitch thing even if there is a way for the user to take additional steps to work around the glitch. I have to spend about 5 extra minutes per listing to do the work around and I'm not confident that the next update won't do the same thing again. 

[barkybeagle]

Getting the same Bold issue in the item description.  Although it sometimes leaves a line un-bolded after going back and editing.  This Bold issue just started this week.  I did use a different computer and made a new listing with no problem.   But then I went back on this "other" computer to edit the all-Bold listings, and it still stays all Bold.  Definitely annoying as I don't want an all Bold item description.

[wastingtime101]

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@knownobob wrote:

 it is an ebay glitch thing even if there is a way for the user to take additional steps to work around the glitch.

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100% agree @knownobob , but keep this in mind:

When eBay fixes it, it'll be a go-forward fix which means listings already impacted will need to be manually revised by the seller.

That's why it's great to know how to strip out all that formatting and start clean because if you start with an existing listing that has all kinds of funky HTML happening, the listing will be more susceptible to further problems.

I looked into the code on new listings from several sellers reporting this problem and there is a lot of extraneous HTML code on all listings I checked.

When I tried to duplicate the error on my own listings I was not able and I think that's because I use plain text and have "clean" code, if that makes sense.

So yes, it is an eBay error and they need to fix it, but at the same time you'll need to go back and fix affected listings manually anyway, plus now you have some great tips for managing descriptions go-forward.

[kensgiftshop]

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@iamalwaysright wrote:

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

So if I see that it's a user error I should not comment?

Read the HTML - you have a large font size tag.

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Ooooooh he is talking about his listing description section. This whole time I thought he was referring to his actual variations, attributes, and options in the listing (them pull down menus). And I’m like huh? You can change the font styles on those?

One thing I have to ask the OP though because I’m curious, why are you putting so many different types of figures as variations into the same listing? The menu says “Select Ship” but I also see creatures, walkers, speeders, etc in there that aren’t ships. I’m surprised you haven’t gotten any negs because a buyer missed something crucial in your listing description, but it must be that your photos are pretty accurate that already covers what’s mentioned in the description.

Is it an informal cross promotion thing, or a sales history thing? I see that you have other listings too that do the same. How do you determine what figure goes into which multi variation listing? That’s a pretty crazy collection you have. 

Not that this would help fix your current issue, but I don’t really trust the eBay HTML editor. I often design listings on a separate HTML editor and copy/paste it over to eBay. Also it helps me have another copy of the listing design stored elsewhere.

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I don't know why they let them abuse the variation option like that.

Different items are not a variation and they should have their own listings.

[knownobob]

Yes, agree 100% on all of your points! I will transition my listings each time I make an update. 

[iamalwaysright]

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@monica-sells wrote:

@eburtonlab 

Maybe you could chime in here...I always use my own html editor, but in reviewing under inspection for this OP, it appears the ebay editor is not closing a directive for font at the very first word "CHOOSE"

most likely this is a glitch in the ebay html editor...no?

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Ahh, more the reason why I said earlier about not trusting the ebay html editor. 3rd party copy/paste all the way.

[iamalwaysright]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

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@knownobob wrote:

 it is an ebay glitch thing even if there is a way for the user to take additional steps to work around the glitch.

---

100% agree @knownobob , but keep this in mind:

When eBay fixes it, it'll be a go-forward fix which means listings already impacted will need to be manually revised by the seller.

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Not sure how relevant my reply is to this issue, but there are some 3rd party services that revise live bulk listings in ebay. They have a function to find and replace character strings within the listing description with another set of character strings you enter of any group of listings you select. This includes HTML code.

So you can get crafty with that and possibly fix all the affected listings in a matter of minutes. I've done that before myself years ago when I realized I accidentally had broken code in a group of my listings. So if necessary, there's ways so you don't have to manually revise each of these listings individually. 

[wastingtime101]

eBay bulk editor can do the same @iamalwaysright , however I didn't suggest it here as it doesn't apply. The impacted listings I saw didn't have consistency for a bulk edit. Sellers had too much varied extra code in there and all different text. It wasn't a simple find/replace/add/edit/etc process.

[jhoro]

eBay HTML editor is a real piece of work. Shows one thing, then turns it into something completely different when I preview/publish. Not just the bold problem but missing new, lines, fonts change, etc. Real mess.

My solution is to use CKEditor here

https://onlinehtmleditor.dev/

Format your description using their rich text editor, switch to the HTML view, copy, then paste on eBay while in HTML mode.

[rebornequipment]

Virtually all of my listings are affected by this. My listings look like a 9 year old composed and formatted them. I haven't had any sales in weeks, so now I know why.

[welserhof]

Same issue here in Austria.

Just by clicking on the html editor, it switches everything to bold.

Actually it switches all the <b> Tags to <Strong>

also it randomly changes the Paragraphs.

Hopefully they will fix this problem soon.

With more than 900 articles online this is horro 😞

[aufili_limited]

I had the same problem around the time of your original post, and have started having the same problem again the last few days... Anytime I paste my listing into the HTML editor, I can click outside the box and watch my HTML change -- always resulting in missing (or extra) line breaks and all text appearing bold. Very frustrating.

[rimtrim]

It appears someone at eBay decided to deprecate the "b" tag in favor of "strong", except they don't know how to write a regular expression. I've found that even if I start from scratch with a blank description using only the listing editor, it will still corrupt the description if I start adding bold text:

Item description without boldingHTML without boldingCorrupted description after bolding the word "wheel"Corrupted HTML after bolding the word "wheel"

The first two screenshots show the item description without bolding. The latter two show how the description was corrupted when I simply tried to bold the word "wheel". A br tag was changed to "strongr" which is not a valid tag, so I lost the line breaks. And the "strong" tag around the word "wheel" wasn't closed. eBay folks, are we not testing now, just pushing everything to production on the first try?