Trying to use info row to use LEN to count title characters in FT listings.

[personal_boutique]

I must be going about this wrong. Here is what I tried:

[dollybeauty]

@personal_boutique 

This is a limited view of your spreadsheet, but from what is here...

1) Delete all 'info' lines. These are not valid FileExchange 'Action' verbs. They are included in your template from eBay as a help to see what eBay wishes to see you use as options.

2) The C:MPN field is a required field.

[dollybeauty]

@personal_boutique 

The LEN function in most spreadsheets is a function of the spreadsheet you are using. Consult with the spreadsheet help options.

[personal_boutique]

Except for the last row, the info rows did not generate errors nor did the omission of MPN (perhaps because I am not listing in the “catalogue”) so I am not concerned about removing the info rows right now.

So maybe the question is “can i get eBay’s mainframe to ignore  a cell containing a formula? “

[shipscript]

@personal_boutique 

@dollybeauty 

"Info" is a valid action verb that instructs File Exchange to ignore all cells in the entire row. The >>> in the example is not needed, as long as "Info" is in the first cell and is the only word in that cell. I frequently replace the action verb with "Info" to comment out an item that I don't want applied in the current batch. Your screencapture is quite small, but it looks to me like "Info" in the last row is lowercase instead of capitalized.

[dollybeauty]

@personal_boutique 

Of course. Just name the column (heading) anything that is not a normal FileExchange heading.

Example.

1) FileExchange ignores any column that does not contain a recognized FileExchange heading.

2) Create a column in your spreadsheet, named, shucks, how about TitleLen. Place a formula in that column's second cell (using Excel here), '=len(source column)'. To be more clear...Your title is in column E, (if you insert a column, it would now be column F) so the so the formula would be '=len(f2)'. Copy that down the column E. it should (at least in Excel) work for each row. So you now have a column (not recognized, and will not cause an error). in column E that tells you your Title length.

3) Trust me...Delete the 'Info' rows.

[dollybeauty]

@shipscript 

Thanks! At one time, 'Info' would cause an error. Or maybe it was the blank lines between the last Action verb and the Info lines.

[dollybeauty]

@personal_boutique 

This..."Copy that down the column E"

Should read (above) ..."Copy that down the column F".

[shipscript]

@personal_boutique  I agree with the recommendation that @dollybeauty suggested to create a separate column for your TitleLen formula. This is something I've done before to make sure the title did not exceed 80 characters and to make sure some of the other field lengths (typically 65 chars) were not exceeded. 

When you export to CSV, the formula results are converted to values, so there are no formula issues. It works just fine.

If you format your TitleLen column to show negative numbers in red, and then use this formula to show the number of available characters remaining, it will be easier to find the red numbers that are out of range: 

=80-LEN(E2)

Or you could simply sort your data on the TitleLen column and all the out-of-range line items would be lumped together -- but I still like color.

[shipscript]

---

@dollybeauty wrote: At one time, 'Info' would cause an error. Or maybe it was the blank lines between the last Action verb and the Info lines.

---

It might have been the intervening blank lines. I haven't uploaded any with blank lines to test that issue.