file exchange help please!

[custom-performance-products]

OK, I've been trying on and off for MONTHS now to try to get file exchange to work for uploading my listings.  I've always used turbo lister for the 7000+ ads I have stored on my computer, but as we all know it is an old buggy crotchety piece of junk that they keep threatening to go away.  So...  I've gone exhaustively throught the file exchange instructions and have an excel spreadsheet (one listing anyway) all set up to do what I need, and can upload that listing EXCEPT I can't figure out how to properly format the "description" cell to accept my description as I have it typed out.  The instructions for this cell are very vague in the instructions.  A call to ebay help was no help.  She told me it had to be in HTML format.  Fine, except I don't know how to do that.  All she could tell me is "well we can't teach you to do html...".  I've tried using word to html tools online.  I've tried using the html convertor in turbo lister and pasting that into my excel.  I tried manually setting up a listing directly on ebay with the description I wanted, saving it, then using that html to copy into file exchange.  None of it worked.  Plain text does not work, except if I only type in a few words in plain black text like "test do not purchase", oddly enough that works and will upload.  I've searched the knowledge base and discussion boards and can't find anything on this issue.

Here is a test listing with what I want the description to look like:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/143011474833

To get that one to work I uploaded it on file exchange with a blank description, then revised the listing and pasted that description from my word file to the ebay item and saved it.  Obviously not an efficient way to get a large volume of listings done.

So how exactly to I get this description field filled in file exchange?  Somebody please help, I have a huge backlog of new ads to post and I'm ready to shoot holes in my computer!  Thanks for any help.

[custom-performance-products]

you brought up a separate topic which has bothered me, but I just hadn't had time to delve into, or at least it was lower on my priorities...

That mobile summary you mention.  I did look at my ad in the tool and see what you mean.  I had noticed that not on a mobile device as I always use a pc for my ebay work, but the same thing happens on many of my ads viewed on ebay on the pc as well.  They will have that randomly selected mess of words as a summary, and the buyer has to click to see the full description.  I have no idea why that happens. 

Is there some reasoning as to how ebay selects those random and useless (out of context) bits to put in the summary?  As in is there a way for the seller to select what shows up there?  Or structure the description in a way that the important part gets picked?  It really makes no sense the way it happens now.  The buyers must think a am comepletely illiterate when they see that summary.

[shipscript]

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@custom-performance-products wrote:
...I did try going to one of my existing ebay listing, opening the edit screen, and then copy/paste from the html side of that listing into my cell in my file exchange spreadsheet.  It didn't work...

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@custom-performance-products

The reason it does not work is because the HTML code that you copied from eBay is not compressed. It still contains linebreaks. eBay does offer a compression utility to File Exchange users, and it will remove linebreaks just like the [><] compress button on the tool I linked previously.

You can download and unzip eBay's compression utility here:

http://pics.ebay.com/aw/pics/pdf/us/file_exchange/FileExchangeDescriptionUtility.zip

or you can use the compression button on the online tool I provided here:

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/MobileSummaryEditor.htm

[shipscript]

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@custom-performance-products wrote:
Is there some reasoning as to how ebay selects those random and useless (out of context) bits to put in the summary?  As in is there a way for the seller to select what shows up there?  Or structure the description in a way that the important part gets picked?  It really makes no sense the way it happens now.  The buyers must think a am comepletely illiterate when they see that summary.

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eBay's Mobile Summary:

eBay has an algorithm to look for useful words that are common to search, or to the category in which you are listing, and that don't simply repeat the title and that may appear multiple times within your listing.  They guess pretty well on short listings and get it quite wrong on complex listings. Acknowledging that shortcoming, eBay introduced Mobile Summary tags that a seller can wrap around the text that is to be used as the summary.

http://pages.ebay.com/sell/itemdescription/customizeyoursummary.html

That has been a great asset to sellers with complex descriptions, but, unfortunately, the tags can be difficult to use.  eBay does not allow text styling  inside the summary, and people who use Word are going to be hopeless in this regard because Word is going to style everything.  Those who use a template are able to wrap a style around the whole summary block, and thus avoid putting those styles inside the summary block.

The tool I linked was designed to help sellers add Mobile Summary tags without requiring knowledge of HTML. The toolbar has a {} button that will convert the selected text to a Mobile Summary.  But if you try that on your own text, you will see your styling disappear.  We can discuss workarounds because there are many different ways to get around the problem, which will be based on your editing tools, your template, and whether the summary should be different from what is displayed in the description template.

I think you might also be ready to discuss whether a template is more appropriate for you. And at the same time, how and when you plan to migrate to the new store format. Unfortunately, that is still a hill to climb that you may not want to address just yet. But if you are planning on mass submission of listings through File Exchange, now would be the time to address the appearance of your listings before you double your listings.  But you may not want all of this mixed up in one forum thread.

[custom-performance-products]

well I had a nice long reply about a few other issues you brought up, BUT then when I hit post the thing came up bright red about no authentication or some such garbage and I lost the whole thing.  too tired to retype it all now, I'll try again tomorrow.

[shipscript]

I feel your pain. Been there, done that (LOTS of times). The no-authentication means your log-in session has been lost. I have to be careful around times like 2:00 and 10:00 because the sessions tend to automatically expire on those round numbers, and sometimes my wi-fi assigns a new dynamic IP and that throws off the session cookies.

Usually, I can click back to the Rich Text tab and recover most of my content. Then open the thread in a new window, start a new reply, and copy/paste from one to the other. Also, the forum has an  "autosave" feature. If you go back to the thread and start a new reply to the same post as before, it should ask if you want to reload. That usually recovers most of the content (as long as you didn't click "cancel").

[berserkerplanet]

>> then when I hit post the thing came up bright red about no authentication or some such garbage and I lost the whole thing.

You need to get in the habit of copying messages to the clipboard while composing because of that forum software time out idiocy. (I often take 30 min, an hour, or more on and off researching, going off in other browsers and experimenting, and re-editing posts, and it happens to me multiple times a day, but I've learned to hit Ctrl-A/Ctrl-C before hitting the post button.)

[custom-performance-products]

OK, so....

After working for the last two days straight (with a little real world responsibility mixed in) I am finally able to upload an actual working listing via file exchange!  I was even able to sort out the mobile description summary and make that work.

Here is what did and didn't work:

dollybeauty - I tried several times to export from turbolister.  creating, saving, and exporting the listing to a file exchange format was fine.  But every time it limited the description to a few characters.  I did a count on one and it was 255 characters only, leaving out the bulk of the description, and what was there did not work, the description came up blank.  And I tried yet again to get it to update and/or full version install, no luck, just crashes during install.  I could not find anywhere on ebay to download turbolister, it is my understanding it can not be downloaded anymore and only current TL users can keep using it?  Which may be an issue for me which will pop up in the next part here as I only have it on one computer.

shipscript - I tried every possible convolution of your suggestions.  I ran my description through your mobile summary tool, your other ebay description tool on your website, as well as ebay's FE description conversion tool.  Nothing worked.  I tried various versions of my description.  From standard word file, web page filtered word file, compacted in your tool and not, stripped and not, anything else I could think of running through those tools nothing  would produce a listable FE file.  One of three things would happen.   I could paste the html into the proper cell in my FE excel file, it would look ok, but would not produce a listing at all on upload, or would produce a listing with a blank description.  OR the copied/pasted html would copy into excel as plain text (which would not upload either).  OR the copied/pasted html would not copy into a single cell, it would cascade into any number of cells down the same column.

What did work-  long and convoluted, but this has worked for several test listings reliably so far. 

1.   Save the description in word as a web page, filtered. 

2.  copy/paste all the text from the word file into the description builder of a listing in TL, and save it.

3.  open the TL listing back up, select all and copy/paste the html from TL into shipscript's mobile summary description editor in the code editor section.

4.  click over to the standard editor section and highlight and mark the section of the description for the mobile summary.

5.  click back over to the code editor section and use the >><< button to compact the html.

6.  copy/paste the html from there into my excel FE template (already saved as a csv file) in the description cell.  must be pasted into the line at the top and NOT directly into the cell.  if I paste it directly into the cell it fills that cell plus the one directly below it.

7.  save the excel FE template again, still as a csv.

8.  go to ebay FE and upload the file.

Here is the listing produced that way:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/382635398916

The mobile descrition summary works, I looked at it on my phone.  I had to add a line break between each vehicle because it all wrapped together in a big mess on the phone, this cleaned the mobile description up, but looks stretched out on the pc.  But it works on both.  I guess I must be too old a generation, I've never looked at an ebay description on my phone as a buyer or seller, I only use the pc.  So I'm learning something about the way younger people shop now, which is a good thing.

So believe it or not, the ONLY way (and I'll bet I tried a hundred convolutions) I could make this work is utilizing BOTH dollybeauty's turbo lister idea and shipscript's tool idea together in a hybrid.  Trust me, I'm open to any suggestion to make that simpler.  The thing that scares me for the future is I am relying on turbolister which is only on one comupter and is going away, and shipscript's tool (no offense) which is 3rd party and may not always be around later.  Also a bit time consuming to do for each and every description.  There has to be an easier way.

BUT, at least for now I can get on with the business of writing ads and getting them up and hopefully making me money.

Lastly, shipscript mentioned some other things I should look at maybe before I write tons of ads.  The only change to the store format I was aware of already happened (I think) and they converted (and messed up) my store a while back.  To be honest I know it looks bad and needs maintenance, just one of the too many irons in my current fire...  but if there is something I need to do differently to my new ads to work better with the new store format, then by all means I'd rather do it now.  You also mentioned using a template?  I am probably way wrong here, but is a template not just a generic listing you can just make a few changes to to make a new listing?  Is that not pretty much what FE does?  I can just modify the line for a similar listing to make a new one.  Or are you talking about a template that changes the whole look of the listing?  I admit to knowing nothing about that, and help would be appreciated there as well.

Thanks very much to both of you for all your time and suggestions thus far.  It is greatly appreciated.   I am farther ahead today than I have been for many months trying to get this description bug figured out.

[shipscript]

@custom-performance-products

The symptoms sound like you may not be collecting the HTML code and are having to jump through hoops to shake off some of the underlying control codes.

When you generate a "web page, filtered" file, Word will save an HTML file  to  your computer. Open that new file with Notepad so that you will see only the HTML codes and won't be able to pick up any control codes. (Notepad can only display plain text or plain code.) You should be able to paste that HTML into the Code tab of Mobile Summary Editor tool, mark off the summary, compress the codes, and have something that can be pasted into Excel.

Here is what I mean by a description template:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/223236214292

I saw eBay's old listing frame on your items and assumed you still had the old store format, so the template I put together matches that old listing frame. It can be changed.

Nonetheless, what I wanted to show is that some sections of your text could be grouped together as boilerplate.  The centered text in your current listings is not recommended because it is difficult to read. So this template left-aligns the text and constrains the width so it won't stretch too wide on desktops. It's a rough design so that you can rethink  organization.

Additionally, the template puts styles around the mobile summary without putting any code inside the summary.  I've assigned all the black text as mobile summary.

[custom-performance-products]

A.  your template is really nice, I like it and am amazed you did that so quickly.  I do have a lot to learn.  I will contact you later for more about that.   Is that something you do as part of your business for a fee?  You may have a new customer!

B.  Aaaarghhh...  sometimes I really hate computers.   I was curious, so I went to open my word file with notepad as you suggested to try that method, and accidentally opened it with wordpad.  I did NOT save anything, simply closed it again.  Went back to my folder where I have all these ebay files I've been working on and ALL my word documents in the folder are now docx files and the one I had opened also duplicated itself as an aol file.   I'm hoping I can open and resave those as word files again, but it's past bedtime I'll deal with that tomorrow.

Thanks again.

[shipscript]

It sounds like you may have assigned a file type within Windows file manager by leaving "always open with" checkmarked when choosing the opener program. If that is the case, you could undo that by using "open with" and searching for Word as the program and making sure that "always open with" is checkmarked when you choose Word.  I've got family arriving right now, so can't assist today. Perhaps @berserkerplanet  is available today?  What version of Windows are you running?

[berserkerplanet]

A bit late to arrive here, but a couple of thoughts.

I am no expert of Office - I use Office 2000 when I absolutely have to, have the MS document converter installed to allow it to deal with new docx files, and pretty much really hate office and what MS had done with it, so am not up on the behavioral nuances of the newer versions. Also, I run Win XP, so also am not up on the drastic changes MS has made in the newer versions of Wordpad (I'm using a 2007 version which can't render docx files properly - just displays them as plain text - and can't save files in that format.)

Not knowing what Windows version you are running, what Word version, or what Wordpad version (along with my previously admitted ignorance of the details of those), it is impossible to determine what happened with your Word files. You stated docx file extensions as if that is something new, which might indicate you are running a very old version of Word, or chose to save your documents in a legacy format.

How you opened the file with Wordpad is unclear, but your wording might indicate you used "open with" context menu option, "choose program", and mis-clicked on Wordpad instead of Notepad, and that the "always use the selected program to open this kind of file" checkbox was ticked.

That would change the file associations but should not have changed the file extensions from doc to docx unless that is a behavior of newer Windows and newer Office suites (my understanding is that newer Office versions are more entwined in the OS and may very well be doing things like that behind the scenes to make it "easier" for the user who doesn't want to control their own files).

However, it shouldn't happen, since docs files are xml based containers and totally incompatible with Word legacy formats (in which case you might have to open them up in Word and re-save in legacy format again to make things as they were)


I'd suggest doing exactly as shipscript recommended: do an "open with" on one of the docx files, choose Word and "always use..." and see what happens.

If some background file conversion (because Office Suite?) actually occurred, it may be more complex to put things back the way they were.


Sorry that doesn't help much, but there are far too many unknowns here at this point..

[fashionvineyardstore]

Whom do you use to host your pictures? Thanks 

[custom-performance-products]

Thanks for your input, anything is valuable to me.  After using computers for about 40 years since my first 4k Radio Shack Color Computer, I have never felt more stupid around computers than recent years.

2010 era laptop running windows 7 with microsoft office starter 2010 (with word) that used to come preinstalled and free back then.  I use excel all the time and word occasionally and have never used wordpad or notepad until yesterday.  Never ran into a docx file until now.  I did try to open the file back up in word using "open with" and word is not a option.  "office 14" is an option, but is not really there when you click on it, apparently that is a paid version I never upgraded to.  Even looking under "other  programs" or "browse", Word is not to be found.

If I open Word first, then open my file folder, I can click on the docx file and open it with Word.  I can then save it (at least appears to save it) as either a web page, filtered or as a Word document.  But either way when I go back and look at my folder it is there only as a docx file.

OK, scratch that last.  Suddenly all the files in my folder that were docx are now Word.  Maybe opening and saving that one triggered them to swap back, opposite of yesterday?  Anyway problem apparently and inexplicably solved!

That problem anyway...

[custom-performance-products]

The bulk of my current listings are produced and stored in turbolister the photo stored in turbo lister.  In more recent years I have been linking the manufacturers stock hi res photo directly from their website for newer turbolister ads.  I have done a few directly in selling manager and for those I have downloaded the same picture onto my computer. 

On the FE listings I am struggling with I linked the mfg website for the photo and that has worked fine on all my test uploads.  I suspect I would be better off hosting those on my own website, but haven't gotten around to creating a section on my website for that.  Not enough time in the day...

[custom-performance-products]

That methodology worked to get a funtioning listing with description.

Word doc, save as website filtered.

Open with notepad.

Copy/paste into code editor side of your tool.

Bracket my summary, and compact the html.

Copy/paste to my excel FE spreadsheet.

Upload with file exchange.

Yay!  Relatively simple and working.  Thank you.

Of course now you showed me a whole better looking and hopefully simpler way to do my ads with your sample template you made up.  I like that a LOT.  I would need to tweat the verbiage a little, I made some minor changes since the text you used, and a couple paragraphs need shuffled.  But I really like the way you laid that out.  If I tweak the paragraph placement a little, the first and fourth blocks would be the same for all my ads.   I will need a variety of second blocks, one for each wheel brand/stlye.  And a variety of third blocks, one for each group of vehicle fits we have.  So a combo of block 2 and block 3 (plus the correct item specifics of course) will get me to each ad.

So...  Is that something you do in your business?  Or is it time to start a new thread on using templates?  Is that still done in file exchange somehow?

Thanks again everybody for your help so far.  I'm feeling marginally less stupid than a couple of days ago.