Hiya all
Have found success today revising all 500+ listing photos using file exchange PicURL.. after a massive fail yesterday. Went through some old archived threads from @shipscript @jmks-supplies @dollybeauty. Called ebay apps team today and spoke to Eric.
I would like to to share my findings below and hope someone else can find success using these methods described to avoid any errors when uploading pictures using PicURL column in File Exchange. I will start from the beginning and go step by step in simple terms..
1 - Download the "Revise price and qty' file via file exchange. Attached photo.
2 - Open in excel, change the format to "Number" with 0 decimals. At this point I usually save the file as normal xls so I can colour code things and filter things as needed. If you have any child variations on your items, you can remove them now if the photos are not different to the parent. All that is needed is the row of the item title with item number etc. If your variations have different pics, then I am not sure these instructions will work.
3 - Insert a column (after the title if you want) called PicURL (exactly as shown)
4 - Upload all pictures onto a dedicated FTP with SSL (I use namecheap EasyWP). Cheap free hosting will NOT work and give you errors, ebay will not push it through, and you could end up with listings with NO pics, this has happened to me! Ebay have advised you need to use https otherwise some of the photos will have errors or warnings. This is a really important step, and not to be avoided otherwise you could end up with items and no photos like I did.
5 - You need to put in all pics urls into the PicURL column. No you cannot just replace one pic unfortunately, they must all be replaced irrespective of if this is needed or not. Since you have already uploaded all your photos onto your secure SSL server, you will need all the URLs now. example of a URL mydomain.easywp/images/pic1.jpg
Now.. Paste in each URL with a pipe | to separate each URL. You can have up to 12 URLs, due to 12 images limit. example mydomain.easywp/images/pic1.jpg | mydomain.easywp/images/pic2.jpg | mydomain.easywp/images/pic3.jpg | mydomain.easywp/images/pic4.jpg
It is also important to ensure your photos are not huge files. For example i use 800 x 800 px files which are approx 0.15 meg in size. I dont think anything above 1200 x 1200 px is necessary for ebay, and may cause strain on the server when ebay tries to upload it. I use photoshop to save all my files at this optimised size, but there are free programs available out there if you google them.
5 (Tip) - URL entering can be made into an excel formula to save time manually entering. For example, all my items have a SKU / item code. (eg, ANA-01). This is shown in the "CustomLabel" column. Now, I name all my pics using this code (eg, ANA-01.jpg, ANA-01_V2.jpg). So it's easy to create a formula in excel to populate this sequence. I can provide a sample formula someone requests it.
6 - It's great to sort in excel by SKU. This way, you can do the upload in batches. For example, I batch upload all SKU's starting with A and B, so my image server is not bombarded. This is listed as a step as batch uploading could also prevent errors that occur from server bombardment. Keep your XLS file as the master file with all your items, and save in batches later for uploading.
7 - Time to save your batch ... In excel go to File > Save as > Comma-separated Values (.csv). Ebay have advised do not use CSV UTF-8 as it can cause errors (another mistake I made!)
8 - Time to upload. Go to File Exchange > Upload > Upload files > Choose your file button > Select file on your computer > Click upload. You can watch the results by clicking "View Upload Results" on the left hand side menu.
If you have followed all above there should be no errors. If you are still having errors you can leave a message here and I will try my best to answer but I am still no expert. The ebay advanced apps team are very good at what they do and they have helped me through this.
Another (very interesting) result that occured, is that all my pics uploaded through file exchange, have no moved to ebay image server. Ebay had advised only the 1st gallery picture will move to ebay's image server.. but all 6 pics in each listing are now hosted on ebay.. go figure? Example: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/232980348108
Thats it from me hope this is helpful to someone out there!
