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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.
@22divino22 If your listings have other unmet mandates, the name change alone may not be enough. I'll take a look at your listings to see if you also might need to update the condition and some item specifics at the same time.
1) I found only one listing 174835151584 with "Card Number" as a variation name. It is missing the "Graded" and "Sport" item specifics, so it will fail to revise.
Here is your link to the variation scanner for that one item, with your details prepopulated to generate an upload report for File Exchange.
After you upload, you can go in and edit the Item specifics to include more information.
2) Next, you have a listing 174648968525 with "Card Attributes" that is missing "Graded". Here is the link to generate a revision report for that card.
After you upload, you can go in and edit the Item specifics to include more information.
As far as I can tell at this point, those are the only two that are blocking revisions. You should be able to manually revise the other variation listings to update their item specifics and condition.
Active Listings
I see that you have 8 active variation listings and 7 of them use "Card Number" as the droplist group name, while one uses simply "Number" as the name.
All 8 variations have the required item specifics of "Graded" and "Sport".
All of them have properly sized photos, and none have variation photos.
They all have a null item condition that should be changed to 3000 (used).
You can bulk rename those 8 listings using the Variation Scanner.
I have preloaded the settings that you would need to run the scan.
When the scan finishes, the report will be prepopulated with settings. I've chosen "Card#" as the new name, but you can change it at this point to something else in the report settings.
Then click "Build Report". When that report loads, click the "Download Report" button to save the file to your desktop.
Next step is to upload that file to Seller Hub.
As soon as you choose the file from your desktop, eBay will start uploading the file to Seller Hub. A status box will appear at the lower left of the page.
If there is an immediate failure, I'm going to blame it on the weekend, because that seems to produce failures.
When the status is complete (success or success with some issues), close that overlay and you will see your upload as new row on the upload history page. Scroll over to the right on that row to find eBay's responses to your upload (which can be downloaded and viewed).
I would expect the uploads to work because those listings appear to have very little to address.
Draft Listings
The drafts are going to be more difficult. The Scanner tool can not access drafts and there is no way to bulk edit the draft variations.
If your drafts are already loaded with a variety of SKUs, quantities, and prices, you'll want to capture those values before editing. I haven't yet found any way to do that through the system for drafts, so you may be writing down values.
When manually editing a variation listing, it is possible to Edit the variation Attributes (names of dropdown groups) by first creating a new "Attribute" to replace the old (left image below).
Then copy/paste each "option" from the old Attribute to the new. This can be done right in the listing within the Attribute editor by swiping/copying the text from an old option and pasting it into the "create your own" field (middle image below).
After copying all of the options (player names in this example) to the new Attribute (right image below), proof the two lists and then delete the old Attribute name at the top using the "X" next to its name.
[These are desktop views where I have deceased my browser width to stack the data vertically for these screencaptures. In normal desktop, the options-panel is to the side.]
Upon clicking "Update variations" to save and close the option-entry screen, you may be asked whether you want the system to build your new combinations or whether you want to perform this step yourself. Simple variations with only one Attribute name will bypass this question, while multi-variation listings are more complex and can result in hundreds or thousands of combinations. If you have a multi-variation listing, and have almost every combination available, let the system do the work. Otherwise, if you only have some of the possible combinations, you'll want to build the dozens yourself, rather than deleting a thousand premades that you don't want.
Arriving at the screen where combinations are made, the quantity, price, and sku will be reset and will require re-entering, so this is where a saved report will make it easier to plug in the original values.
Returning to the photo selection screen, the photo attached to each option in the old attribute list will remain and will automatically be applied to the new attribute list, as long at the option names (player names in the above example) still match. If there are no typos and the images appear as expected, save the listing revision.
This is manageable for a small number of items and short lists.
@nygiants20 wrote:I did update one of my drafts but it didn't go exactly as you described. I was able to add the new attribute (Card#) and then copy/paste the options (number and player name). But, the old attribute doesn't appear so I never deleted it. I just added the new info and saved it and it looked ok.
Do you think I missed something?
The screen on the far right is where you would have deleted the old attribute "Card Number".
I think you can verify by previewing the draft to see if it has only one, and not two, drop lists.
Then go back into editing the variations to see if only one attribute exists on the editing screen. If you see the voided name on that screen, then delete it there and make sure the new name is still populated with options.
I believe we can fix these issues in bulk, after determining what issues exist in each category.
It seems you may be describing two or more issues:
1) your listings have mandatory item specifics that must be changed
2) your variation names are now reserved by eBay and are invalid to use as variation names.
3) do you have any listings with a blank item condition?
I scanned through your 703 variation listings that appear in a multitude of categories. Do you have issues in all categories, or should we focus on a few.
These are your most populous variation categories (the others are onesies):
202 listings in Category 261328 Sports trading cards singles
329 listings in Category 183050 Non-Sports trading cards singles
111 listings in Category 82286 TV: Postcards & Collector Cards
51 listings in Category 53591 Movie: Postcards & Collector Cards
By now, I am pretty familiar with the requirements for the Sports trading cards category, so we might start there. All of the variation listings in that group contain the required "Graded" specific. However, a few are missing a value in the "Sport" column, so those will need a little work before uploading.
With those exceptions in mind, I believe you can go ahead and use the Variation scanner for just that category to get started.
I have prefilled this link to the Variation Scanner with settings for your job. When the scanner opens, it will populate with your name and category number. When the scan completes, the report settings will also be populated. I've changed "Card Number" to just "Number", although you can select some other rename on the report settings. Also, the invalid condition ID numbers are all changed to "used" (3000).
Only about half of your variations in that category use "Card Number", so only about 100 listings will be revised with that setting.
Click the "Build Report" button and then "Download Report" to your computer.
Go to Seller Hub > Reports > Upload
Upload the report you saved to your computer. When the status in the lower left corner indicates success, possibly with some issues, close that status box. Your report will be added to the report history on the same page. Scroll over to the far right and download the response file. That file will tell you if there were errors in any of the listings. We'll need to look at that to determine if further work is needed on those listings. I would expect at least a dozen to fail due to missing "Sport" or "Graded", and we can address those in a specially edited upload.
Please ask for clarification where you don't understand the instructions or terms.
Carefully read my prior post where I provide the method to bulk revise your "Card Number" to "Number". The steps are repeated below:
- Click >> this link << to open the Variation extraction tool, which I have preset to download your variation listings and to populate your custom settings.
- When the scan finishes, and the report area appears, click the "Build Report" button. There will be about 100 listings in that report.
Variation Scanner Report
- When the report appears on the screen, click the "Download Report" button that is just below the "Build Report" button.
- When your browser downloads, save the report to your desktop.
- Go to the Seller Hub upload screen, find the saved file on your computer, and upload to Seller Hub:
That upload process will revise your listings without losing your photos, qty, or prices. Most of your listings will revise. Some will fail to revise because there are other unmet mandates. After successfully revising the bulk of the Sport Card listings, we can tackle the exceptions.
The error code is not related to your item specifics.
The tag <Item.ListingType> is looking for the listing <Format> with value of <Auction> vs <FixedPrice>
The Format values in File Exchange are:
• Auction (default)
• FixedPrice
• ClassifiedAd
• RealEstateAd
In Seller Hub, those values probably have spaces in them, but both Hub and File Exchange values should work interchangeably. Check your drop down list.
• Auction
• Fixed price
• Classified ad
• Real estate ad
