Bulk Edit/Revise Item Descriptions:

If you are not already familiar with the process for using Turbo Lister and File Exchange to bulk revise eBay listings, please see Bulk edit/revise eBay listings. I assume here that you have worked through the preliminary process described in steps 1-4 on that page and have saved a file named TLFES.csv or whatever you named yours, the important thing being that the file contains all of the fields downloaded from Turbo Lister and that the item numbers have been filled in. This is step 5 of that process specifically with regard to the Item Description field.

First, please note that this methodology will not work for any listings for which you have an item description exceeding 32,767 characters. I believe, although I have not verified this, that Turbo Lister will truncate any descriptions that exceed this length.

1. Delete columns that you will not need to revise item descriptions:

A. Delete all columns to the right of the Description field, which are currently columns Z - FD. For instance, move the cursor to cell Z1, hold down the Shift key while pressing the End key then the Right arrow key, release the Shift key and press Ctrl-- (confusing shorthand for Ctrl-Minus), select the Entire column option, then press Enter or click the OK button. Feel free to use any comparable other method that you are used to.

B. Delete all columns between the ItemID and Description columns, which are currently columns C - X. For instance, click on the C column header cell, drag the cursor to column X to highlight that range of columns, then press Ctrl-- (Ctrl-Minus) and the columns will be deleted. Feel free to use any comparable other method that you are used to.

The columns that remain should be:

A. Action(CC=Cp1252)
B. ItemID
C. Description

2. Move the cursor to cell A1, then copy and paste the following into a text editor such as Word or Notepad or FrontPage, then copy it from the text editor and paste it into cell A1 (pasting directly produces undesirable results), or else type the following into cell A1:

Action(SiteID=US|Country=US|Currency=USD|Version=403|CC= ISO-8859-1)

3. Move the cursor to cell A2 and type the word Revise and press Enter. Copy this cell to all other cells in column A for which there is a listing row using any copy method you are comfortable with.

Your Excel CSV file should look something like this:



If you see exponential format numbers in column B, just widen column B.

You will note that the description cell contents for row 2 continue into column D. This is because Turbo Lister has removed the carriage returns from the item description for the first listing exported. The description cell contents for row 3 and subsequent rows truncate within column C because Turbo Lister has not removed the carriage returns from the item descriptions for other listings after the first one exported.

4. Edit the item descriptions. The first screen shot shows how the description field for the first listing exported will look when you click on cell C2, and the second screen shot shows how the description field will look for subsequent listings exported, when you click on cell C3 through Cx. Again, the differences are due to Turbo Lister having removed the carriage returns from the first listing exported but not from subsequent listings.





In order to actually edit these item descriptions, you have to click on the item description cell a second time. After you click the second time, you will see a cursor within the item description cell. The cursor will not appear where you clicked, but that is not important. What is important is that you can now freely move within the cell and add/change/delete anything you want, subject to the 32,767 character limitation.

If you want to abort any changes that you have made to a description cell and want to start over, press the Escape key. Any changes made will be discarded and you can start over or navigate the spreadsheet. If you are ready to commit the changes that you have made to a description cell, press the Enter key. Your changes will be saved and you can navigate the spreadsheet. Note that you cannot use the Enter key to insert a carriage return into a description cell.

If you prefer, you can copy the item description to a text or HTML editor, make the changes, then paste the results back into the description cell (if you use an HTML editor, paste the original description between the <body> and </body> tags and copy only what is between those tags back into the Excel description cell).

Or you can simply replace the exported item description with a brand new description altogether, whether you type it from scratch or paste it in from a text or HTML editor (if you use an HTML editor, copy only the content between the <body> and </body> tags to paste into the Excel description cell).

5. When you have finished changing the item descriptions that you want to change (and delete any listings if any that you do not want to change), you need to remove all carriage returns within the item description cells.

A. Move the cursor to cell D2 and type in this formula:

=clean(C2)

This function removes all non-printable characters from text including carriage returns, which is exactly what is required to successfully upload a File Exchange file including item descriptions.

B. Copy the formula from cell D2 down column D for all rows for which you have listings.

C. Copy the values of the column D formulas into column C. For instance, with the cursor in cell D2, press the Shift key, then the End key, then the down-arrow key, then Ctrl-C to copy all of the formulas to your clipboard. Move the cursor to cell C2, then press the Alt Key, then the S key, then the V key, and finally the Enter key. Feel free to use any comparable method that you are more comfortable with.

D. Delete column D.

6. Save the file with a different name for the upload to eBay. I name this file Ebaychge.csv.

7. Upload the resulting file to eBay using File Exchange.

See File Exchange Upload Instructions.

8. Check the results.

Review your changed listing(s). If anything did not turn out right, work through the process again and try to figure out what went wrong. As you become more experienced with the process, troubleshooting will become simpler.

Good luck!