ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
eBay's sports trading card deadline for the item specific "Graded" arrived today.
Sellers with variation listings could not modify their item specifics until they resolved conflicts with the variation name "Card Attributes". Now sellers can not bulk update the "Card Attribute" conflict until they add the "Graded" item specific (most will state "No" as the graded item specific) .
Catch-22.
Time to move to Plan B.
For those sellers who still have listings with hundreds of variations to update, but who missed the opportunity to use the bulk variation scanner provided here, and who now can't bulk update at all, the next solution is to include the full set of item specifics in the bulk revision of variations. We can not simply add the missing attribute. Unfortunately, the whole set of Item Specifics must be restated in a bulk revision. I'm working on some sort of solution.
I've got two tools to work with.
The Variation Scanner will pull in the variation data.
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/VariationScanner.htm
The Item Specifics Scanner will pull in the item specifics.
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ItemSpecificScanner.htm
The task will be to merge the two spreadsheets and restate the old item specifics with eBay's new headings and values.
There are actually several photos in that listing that are undersized and that will need to be replaced as you rename your variations. This tool can identify undersized photos in a single listing:
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ShowLargestListingPhoto.htm
and here they are:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/BqgAAOSwYMFfMLSC/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/UEoAAOSwoWRfMLT7/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/8iMAAOSwQR9fMLUP/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/tjsAAOSwUwRfg79T/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ZoIAAOSwUKZfg7~e/s-l1600.jpg
If you are bulk renaming your variations, you may want to delete the undersized photos from the spreadsheet and manually replace them after your bulk revision
There are at least two issues to address.
1) The new Item specifics requirements must be added to your listings before other revisions can go forward.
2) The variation name of "Card Number" must be replaced by another name before other revisions can go forward.
Since your "Card Number" listings are currently in gridlock, you may want to hold off for a week or so until another tool is available for bulk revisions. I will be happy to walk you through that process.
I see that you have requested a raise in in you upload limits and you should have your upload limits increased by then. Please remind me if I lose track of your post.
If you need to fix them ASAP, then I recommend this approach.
The listings that I reviewed had inadequate Item specifics, so you are going to need to upgrade those significantly. In that light, if most listings are lacking, we can change the Card Number name right now and toss out the few specifics you have already assigned to them. That way you can release gridlock and take advantage of eBay's nifty Item Specifics tool to upgrade the specifics.
1) Run the Variation Scanner and change "Card Number" to "Card#". This link is prepopulated with the settings that I think will work best for you.
It will load your listings and set the scan to change the variation name and condition, and will also add two mandatory Item Specifics for "C:Graded" and "C:Sport" to get your listings past the gridlock. Those two settings will eliminate your original item specifics in those listings, so if you don't want to lose that data, then check back and I'll explain how to download an archive using the Item Specifics Scanner.
When the Variation scan finishes, click the "Build Report" button and then use the download button to save the report to your desktop. From there, upload the report to eBay's Seller Hub, as shown below.
After the file uploads, it is very possible that some will have failed, and a "reponse file" is available on the same reports page. Download that report and look for failure messages.
2) After the uploaded spreadsheet is applied to your listings, the next step is to download a spreadsheet of eBay's recommended Item Specifics.
https://www.ebay.com/sh/lst/active?pill_status=itemSpecificsRecommended&action=search
The XLSX data arrives in a spreadsheet with dropdown lists that make it very easy to pick from the list and apply to listings as appropriate. This is a pretty slick way to populate all of your item specifics within a spreadsheet.
When the spreadsheet is finished, export or save as as CSV file and then upload that CSV file on the same page where the Variation spreadsheet was uploaded.
These two processes should bulk upgrade your selected listings for both the Variatio name and for the new Item Specifics. With everything updated, you will then be able to modify the listings manually to add or delete cards.
We are all frustrated with eBay's programmers and structured data team. However, I invited you to this help thread with a sincere offer of assistance; so why not just accept my hand-holding offer?
Yours happens to be rather easy. I have already gone through the exercise of creating the revision reports you would have needed and it took me all of 15 minutes (about the amount of time it took you to post your complaint all over the forums). Are you willing to put in 15 minutes to save your "HUNDREDS of hours of labor"?
I'm currently on vacation with my family, but will be back on the boards in a couple of days. I hope to have an upgraded tool by next weekend to integrate more of eBay's mandates into a single revision upload.
At that time, I will suggest that you download eBay's Item Specifics Recommendation report from Seller Hub as a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet has droplists that will make it quick and easy to populate the missing data across all of your listings in grid format.
Then I will suggest that you use the Variation Scanner to generate a rename report.
We'll put those together and upload a single bulk revision to eBay.
You will have about 15,000 revision rows and the default limit is 5000, so I do recommend that you request a limit increase on this thread to get ahead of the task:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Seller-Tools/File-Exchange-Limit-Increase-Requests-Here/td-p/31420544
(And please don't pollute that thread with off-topic commentary - it's handled by a different team entirely) 😉
