how to recover pictures from my inventory

[fashionoutletdeal]

Hi there 

this morning i find out that all the pictures  that were in my inventory are gone .Is there way that I could recover them ?

[momcqueen]

Are you using a third-party listing tool? Where were your images stored? Who or how were they lost? Do you do a backup?

[fashionoutletdeal]

Hi no im not using a third party .I stored them in my inventory .They were my own pictures and I lost them all .

[momcqueen]

Was this with Seller Manager Pro?

Or are you referring to the inadvertent photo dump that happened around June 20 of this year to any GTC that was re-activated during that two- or three-day spell?

[momcqueen]

Or was this with Drafts? Unsolds? Solds? Did they age past 60 days?

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

For the future, if you decide not to use a 3rd party listing tool(Most have a cost involved), an economical way is to save them to a folder on a pc/laptop or alternatively to a flash drive/sd card or similar along with a card reader. Pick up very cheap at any fine electronics store. Also possible to connect and move from a smartphone with a matching card reader if that was your preference.

-CM

[zee-chan]

I have a similar problem; I have some listings that are almost 90 days old and they lost their pictures. I couldn't relist them because of it. I was going to pay insertion fees to extend the shelf life of those listings, but since the pictures were gone I didn't bother. eBay's loss lol.

[momcqueen]

Good point, I was assuming they were lost online but this may have been a hard drive failure.

Backups to another source or server like an external hard drive or one that’s cloud-based will mitigate the damage from a data loss of mass proportions. No one wants to experience that and have to declare data bankruptcy and begin afresh.

[momcqueen]

Yes. That grinds my gears a bit too. With restocking Sold investory in particular. It might take me a few months to source another one of a particular item and then I’m annoyed I have to rebuild the listing from scratch when it was once perfectly fine.

[fashionoutletdeal]

I guess was the Seller Manager Pro . But its my first time that I lost something that i save in inventory folders .I guess i will need to start from scratch too.

[momcqueen]

So you had stuff saved as inventory in Seller Manager Pro and it vanished as you migrated to Seller Hub? Maybe eBay can roll you back to Seller Manager Pro long enough to make these listings live and active. If it were me, I’d ask Tyler for a rollback long enough to re-list those listings or maybe save as Drafts if there’s not too many of them?

[momcqueen]

(If that’s even possible, I don’t know anything about the Inventory feature of SMPro.)

[lotzofuniquegoodies · Accepted solution]

Because of the ongoing issues with Saving to Draft I have been in contact with tyler regarding this problem. Unfortunately, this is still an issue. Recently I went to use a listing that was saved as a draft. Found out by accident it didn't actually save properly as I thought and was corrupted and received the following  "Something is wrong message. Please try again."

This is the response I received from tyler beginning of October. Hope it helps clarify for anyone else having the same problem and give them an idea how to proceed going forward.

Thanks for the additional detail. Draft listings can be a double-edged sword. They stay active for up to 30 days from when they were last updated. Once past that time they will not always work, which is what it looks like is happening to some of your oldest drafts. 

The other thing I've learned from tech is that a draft listing 'freezes' the listing form in time to the version that existed at the time you made the draft. The older it gets, the more out of date it can become and it can slowly become more quirky, increasing the chance of a corrupt listing or it not allowing you to complete it when you're ready. 

For long term storage of listing data I strongly recommend an offline tool. eBay offers (and still supports) File Exchange. There is a learning curve to it, but they have a phone support team that is remarkably good at helping you through any issues you run into with it. Other than that there are 3rd party tools, but most of those come at an additional cost to you. 

The plus of an offline tool is that it lets you keep things stored indefinitely. File Exchange is great in that it will let you bulk upload edits and manage changes in a (relatively) painless way. Some sellers I work with keep their seasonal inventory set up and ready to go in File Exchange and then do a bulk upload when they're ready. 

If you're running into drafts that are less than 30 days old that are giving you that error will you please let me know which ones they are so I can grab some screenshots from my end?

Tyler

When I check an example in drafts (chose one last saved Sept 12, 2018) to find one with this problem, there is no actual item number to reference because these are non-active listings and are basically in eBay Never Neverland. And this item would not be past its 90 day expiry date. So until Save to Draft is fixed 100%, there appears to be no guaranteed way to save a listing for future use when you receive the bad unsafe link message. The other observation is you are only able to confirm there is a problem to complete a draft if you go through and check each draft one by one. Error problems to these drafts are entirely random.

-CM

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@fashionoutletdeals are you able to tell if the features are working as they should in Selling Manager Pro? Curious to know if this would work until the Saving to Draft problem is fixed 100%. Currently unable to create new listings to save for listing in the future. Just not thrilled it's a paid add-on for something that could be done in the past for free.

-CM

[vintagenorth]

Why not use Turbo Lister? You can save your listings and photos there. Works fine as long as you are diligent about compacting and updating regularly.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

I would like to be able to use Turbo Lister but have been unable to get it to update properly after several attempts including doing a full uninstall and reinstalling. Worked fine for me in the past. I've been in contact with a few other sellers that had similar problems updating, so it's not just me.

-CM

[fashionoutletdeal]

Hi 

I didnt have time to check on this one .If i find something will let you know .Thank you to share  information with us .Will know in the future .One problem file exchange have only on .com not on .ca .I find out this today .

[fashionoutletdeal]

Its look like we all run out of time so we forget to update listings . 

Thats what happened with me .Will need to make new pictures at least I have fun doing it .