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.

[shipscript]

@custom-performance-products

To test the capabilities of your browser editing:

Go to my test listing, place your cursor within the description and right-click-select-all. If only the description is highlighted, and not the rest of eBay's page, then copy and paste that into the Editor tab of the Mobile Summary Editor.  Copying that way will probably pick up some of eBay's code and drop some of the template, but that is not what we are concerned with at the moment.

I would like you to try to edit the existing sections in the online editor instead of using Word. The styles are already built into the template and you will not be able to pick different fonts or colors. The tool doesn't have an underline either, but I can add that.

When you place your cursor into an existing paragraph, like after the first character, everything that you add will be styled to match the existing. But it may be tedious trying to stay within the limits of a paragraph so that you don't disrupt the tags surrounding the paragraph.  If you accidentally backspace/delete out of the paragraph entirely, you will lose the styling of that paragraph.  For instance, if you are typing in the red paragraph and backspace/delete all the way to the black text, the red tags will be lost.

Another option to test is typing everything in plain text mode in the HTML code view. Most don't like to look at HTML, but if we put a whole lot of empty space around the text you want to change, you could type the plain text where it is supposed to be and then switch to the Editor tab to add linebreaks, bold, and underline.  I'm trying to stay in the online editor because that is where you will compress your HTML.

A third option, if staying within the lines is too tedious, is to tag your template for use in a form filler tool like TagBot. In that free online tool, all of your code is hidden and there are only a few slots for pasting your changeable text.  The tool generates HTML that you would paste into the HTML compressor.

[custom-performance-products]

I couldn't thank you more!

I did as you said and copied from the listing you set up for me into the mobile summary tool.  Figured out how to make the last few tweaks I wanted and used that to upload via FE.  Everything worked!  Party time!  The only minor thing I couldn't fix (and only important to ocd types like myself) is that one fat line break that I somehow put in.  No big deal, I'm considering it a full success.  Looks good on desktop and mobile.

Here is the final test listing:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/132863067779

Is that tool going to be available for the forseeable future?  Very handy, exactly what I needed to get this done.  Or is there somewhere to subscribe to a paid version for your trouble?

Thanks again to all that helped me with this!

[hitcha42]

Apart from HTML, you can create it using Bootstrap, CSS.