VitalBodies recently made the transition from listing items on ebay one by one, to using File Exchange to do bulk uploading and editing of listings. Not being familiar with Spreadsheet programs like OpenOffice, spread sheets or File Exchange presented a rather steep learning curve. In fact, the learning curve was so steep at some points it seemed more like a brick wall with no way to pass through. With a LOT of help from the kind staff at Ebay (thank you Cheyenne V) we were able to create a file of some of our listings that would at least upload. Where the next set of problems began is that upon opening the file and making the most simple change (like changing the shipping weight of an item) and saving the file, it would no longer upload.

An unknown Error has occurred try again later.

Our CSV (at the time) was the default comma separated spread sheet that used the quote (“) as the text delimiter and Unicode (UTF-8) character set. Within OpenOffice the spread sheet looked perfect. When the staff at ebaY would examine the file in Excel the spread sheet look perfect to them also. Their main comment was always “you just need to make sure the zip code column is set to custom rather than number so that it will preserve zip codes that start with a zero. When we do that the file uploads fine.

So around and around we went, trying to upload, and having the file fail, and then sending the file back to ebaY, and them sending it back again saying it was fine.

Finally angelesbrotherscycles in the forums said:

Here’s 2 annoying things about your situation:

1) OpenOffice apparently will always double quote everything. The double quotes are fine – except that….

2) File Exchange seems to not like double quotes in the first line – probably because they mean something special for setting defaults.

Open the file you’re going to upload in something other than OpenOffice, remove the double quotes (you can find / replace the ” character with nothing), and try uploading.

We tried that and could not get the problem to go away but it was clear they were onto something. If you opened the spreadsheet in a text editor there were lots more ” than the file ebaY would send back out of Excel.

One other clue that was pointed out is that OpenOffice does not open a CSV, instead it seems to import it. Thus you have to select (every time) your delimiters.

Unfortunately though we had hit our limit, we had been trying for so so long. Plus we do not know OpenOffice all that well and the intricate ins and outs of File Exchange.

Then came Keith’s Online Sales to the rescue!

Keith agreed to look over our file and see if he could get it to upload. After some time and effort the file would upload yet would get a 100% failure rate with parsing errors.

This was a break through, because at least the file would upload!

He took the file even further and got it to upload with a 100% success rate!

Wow, what a HUGE break through! We were so excited!

Next we just needed to test the file on our own and make sure we could OPEN, EDIT and SAVE the file without breaking it again.

With careful instruction we were able to.

The trick was to make the file TAB delimited with no text delimiter at all.

The fields that needed to be TEXT (like the title and description) had to have the ” added manually in the field within the spreadsheet like this: “Futon Mattress TWIN 3″” Pure Virgin Wool Organic Cotton “.

Note how the 3″ (three inches) has to have a second ” and the whole text phrase has to be within “”.

Obviously you have to have all the required headers and such as required by ebaY, but we had already been down that road earlier and our file was compliant.

As a thank you VitalBodies made Keith some new fun logos and graphics for his ebay store:

FILE EXCHANGE:

VitalBodies spent far more time than we would have liked, trying to get our listings out of ebay and into a spreadsheet for editing.

To help save other people some grief this blog post has been, or is being written.

We want to use File Exchange from now on rather than listing items one by one using the ever changing forms on ebay.

Oddly, you can edit and add listings with File Exchange, but you can not download your existing listings.

You can download REPORTS and get TEMPLATES but that is different.

You can even grab data from your Ebay stores RSS feeds or LISTING FEEDS but you still will not get all the data and the descriptions will be limited to 500 characters with no html .

Is that counter intuitive or what? SO how do you get your listings?

TURBO LISTER:

UPDATE: Rather than turbo lister you might give jAOLTa try: http://code.google.com/p/jaolt/

You might have to use Turbo Lister to get your listings and then export the listings to File Exchange (CSV).

From all that we can tell, Turbo Lister for Ebay does not work “out of the box easy” in Ubuntu even with WINE.

We think that it can work. Some have done it in earlier versions of WINE and Ubuntu: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-336264.html

But that is a lot of work for a one time download of ones listings. The work might be worth doing if you plan to use Turbo Lister a lot though.

We were able to download and install Turbo Lister into WINE but the program would not run.

You might use a Windows machine to download and install Turbo Lister and then download your Active listings.
Once you have your listings you can edit them in OpenOffice Calc/Spreadsheet. We suggest you export to FILE EXCHANGE (CSV) format.
Once you have your listings in CSV/File Exchange Format (or OpenOffice), you can email or transfer the file to your Ubuntu or Linux machine.

And, once we had the listings in OpenOffice in Ubuntu we did not need use Turbo Lister any longer, but will be using FILE EXCHANGE from now on.

Download Turbo Lister: http://ebay.com/turbo_lister/index.html
Quick Start Guide: http://pages.ebay.com/turbolister/Turbo_Lister_ListingActivity_QSG1.pdf

Once you have downloaded and installed Turbo Lister you are ready to begin.

IMPORT: File > Import Items > From Ebay Listings > Active Listings > Import

Click for a larger image

Once items are imported to Turbo Lister you then:

Select All The Listings: Click on the top item in the ACTIVE LISTING TABS then hold the SHIFT key down and click the last listing (To select all the listings) .

Export The Listing: File >  Export Selected Items > File Exchange Format (CSV file) > Export

Click for a full sized image

At one point in trying to export our listings we ran into the problem of the Export Selected Items being grayed out.We went onto the forums and got this explanation:

“The export from Turbo Lister won’t work if you are trying to export synchronized listings. You have to export the listings from the Inventory section, after importing from eBay or copying and pasting the synchronized listings.”

Just by chance and shifting to a different computer, we got the listings downloaded before we received the explanation.

OPENOFFICE:

To import the data VitalBodies used these settings: (Note: The text delimiter is only a quotation mark.)

UPDATE: We now use TAB and no text delimiter. Be sure to see our other crucial  post called Getting OpenOffice To Play Nice With Ebay File Exchange as this post could save you weeks of frustration.

Click image for a larger view.

OTHER RESOURCES:

JAOLT: Rather than turbo lister you might give Jaolt a try: http://code.google.com/p/jaolt/

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/turbo-lister-troubleshooting.html

OpenOffice Basics:

If you’re TOTALLY new to OpenOffice then here are a few small tips:
You can reduce the size of the VIEW of the spread sheet by double clicking the 100% on the status bar. This can be essential for getting the spreadsheet to be more manageable at first so it is not totally overwhelming.

You can resize the columns width and rows height also under FORMAT to make it easier to see your data.

You can hide huge columns, like the description, to work on everything else and you will not lose that data by doing so. Format > Column > Hide. Then format > column > Show to make it visible again.
I would not do any sorting with this hidden though.

Be REALLY careful with DATA > SORT…. You need to make sure everything is selected except the header row. Select ALL (ctrl a) and then ctrl click on the top header row to de-select it. Otherwise you can mistakenly sort one or more columns ONLY and the others will stay the same. That can mess up all your data big time! For example, if you leave the item numbers unselected and sort only the titles, then titles will no longer match the items!

Back up the original down load and make a copy of it. ONLY work on the copy, never on the original. You may need to original to make sure everything matches up correctly on the copy that you changed or to bring your listing back to the way they were if you mess them up.

VitalBodies would like to thank keiths-online-sales-uk for helping us in the forums!

…And friends and family!