Oh no, I don't need this! My photos have disappeared on TL!

[msmaggie060]

My eBay hosted photos have all disappeared on my TL! My own PB hosted are still there, but the main photos that appear in my listings have disappeared. I just posted on the TL.com board hoping that someone there can help.

I can't figure it out. The items I listed on Sunday are fine although no photos appear in TL. I just tried listing another item and no photo, I had to revise and add the photo afterwards, so its happened since Sunday evening. I have something like 10,000 photos in Adobe, I'll never be able to find them If I have to add them all back on.

Anyone else having this problem or know a fix?

[msmaggie060]

Well this is just getting weirder! I tried listing one item last night, no photo showed up in the listing (was hoping it would magically appear) so revised and added photo immediately. It is showing okay in my listings but when I went into my TL this morning the photo has disappeared again! So the photos are there, just not showing up in my turbolister.

Haven't had any replies yet on the TL board or from the email sent to TL tech. help.

I was really thinking of opening my store again too. 100's of items, not one photo! Any ideas?

[catsnewwife]

I have noticed this once in awhile with my listings.  I will go into preview, and no photos! I have no explaination, but so far, all the photos have actually appeared in my listings. Have you done a back-up and checked for updates on Turbo Lister lately?  It may help.

[msmaggie060]

Mine didn't appear on my listings, I had to revise and add the photos again. I did a back up but will try an update today, I know I am 1 update behind.

[puckstopshere]

Happened to me last week.  I lost the images on 2200 items.  Luckily, most were in my unsold items on eBay.  It took awhile but I recovered most of them - just took the better part of a week.

When I back up my Turbo Lister, I check the file in my Documents section - before I close Turbo Lister.  You can tell when it only saves data and not the images.  There are two numbers listed when you back up.  Last week, it only showed the smaller of the two numbers.  Unfortunately, I had deleted previous back up data before I realized the problem. 

Now, I leave my old files for at least a week.  That way, I can recover a previous version - with images.

[msmaggie060]

puckstopshere:  how do you recover using the files in my Documents? I assume these are my back up files?

[msmaggie060]

Oops, entered before I finished somehow!

Backing up from a previous copy has got to be easier than what I am doing which is moving files over from my Listing Activity to my Inventory. Its taking hours! The items aren't in any kind of order and I have to go through 1700 items to find the ones I want.

Above is what I was told to do by the TL customer support. Its working but very slow.

[puckstopshere]

Your files are under DOCUMENTS - mine show as Turbo Lister Backup.  Each proper backup has two sets of data - both with the

same date and time.  One will end in "imb" which is your image backup.  The other is "tlb" which is text back up.  My problem showed up when only one line showed up (tlb) but no imb line.  Find the last backup that has two lines. 

When you go to FILES in Turbo Lister, it will give you an option to RESTORE DATABASE.  When you click on that, you will be able to browse and find an earlier set of back up data.  Use the most recent one with two lines as explained above.

[pocomocomputing]

I think there is an issue with what you are doing.

When you create a listing in Turbo Lister, you add your photos from your hard drive.  For me, my photos on my hard drive meet the specs for eBay photos, they are at least 1,000 pixels on a side and a JPEG quality of 90 or more (100 scale).

When you upload the listing, the photos are optimized by eBay for eBay use.  The main photo is now either 500 pixels on one side or 800 pixels if you have the Supersize option.  They are not the same quality as the original photos used for upload. Additional thumbnails of the original photo are made at this time to be used on search pages, etc..  These sizes are 96, 64,42,200,300,400 pixels on the longest side (and some other sizes).

If you take a listing from Listing Activity, either Sold, UnSold or Active, then drag it over to Inventory, you have the eBay optimized photo at 500 or 800 pixels.  That is what is now in your recovered listing. Are all associated thumbnails gone since they are on eBay?

Now what happens when you upload again?  Is this photo again going to be compressed by uploaded? Compressing a photo that is already compressed usually results in degraded photo quality.  This same old eBay photo is now used to make all the various thumbnails used by eBay online.  Now you have thumbnails made from a compressed compressed photo.  Quality will go down in my opinion. Subtle but there.  Have this happen a few more times and what has the picture become?

While the eBay solution to copy a listing from the listing "works", I believe it creates a problem with the photos eventually.

I came across this problem 2-3 months ago when I was trying to recover old listings from my Turbo Lister Listing Activity. I use the online Sell Your Item form and only use Turbo Lister to backup my listings.  When I pull up an old listings from Listing Activity to my Inventory, the listing shows the yellow flag on all photos saying they do not meet the recommended 1,000 pixels and JPEG quality of 90. That is when I realized that the photo was not my original but the online optimized photo. I solved it by just deleting the photo and putting back the original one. Not a practical solution for 1,000 listing but okay for my purpose of just retrieving a few listings.

I will send this to Vincenzo to see if what I say happens is true. It is important to know if the photo quality is being degraded recovering them from Listing Activity.

[msmaggie060]

Interesting pocomo, the reason I am doing it this way is because that is what the TL customer support person told me. I would be interested in knowing about the photo quality. I was told though, that this would only work properly as long as the listings were still showing somewhere in My eBay, either sold or unsold.

My photos on my hard drive for eBay hosting are over 1,000 pixels and over 90 in quality.

Just looked at my TL and you are correct. The 50 or so that I moved over all show up as compresssed! I think I am going to be busy tomorrow trying to find originals or maybe I`ll just retake all my photos. Actually, that is possibly the fastest way to do it now I think about it.

Wonder why I was told to do it this way instead of backing up to a previous version?

[msmaggie060]

To puckstopshere:  when I looked at my TL Backup files under My Documents I noticed that there were a lot of files. Do you mean that I should be going in and deleting TL Backup files every now and then? I have not been doing that.

Also, If I use Restore Database, then I assume that my latest additions/sales, etc. will not be shown? I would have to manually adjust my TL or could I just Synchronize? (I have never really figured out the Synchronize thing).

Thanks.

[pocomocomputing]

Vincenzo replied that there will be loss of image quality.

Vincenzo wrote "Here is an answer from the TL team… hope it helps. Seems that you’re correct… the solution proposed is not a good solution…"

The eBay team wrote "The issue of images being lost is one that comes up from time to time.  It is usually related to this loss of the linked image (older images). 

What Richard is saying on the thread is correct,  because they are not linked over to the original image, but the already compressed eBay image, they would see a loss of image quality and would want to re-add the images."

The method that you were given by the Turbo Lister team will give a solution if you lost the original photos. It is better than nothing. But long term it is better to get the higher quality photos back into the listing.

That is what I do as I keep all my photos.

I find that the Turbo Lister tool is a good tool in concept but the constant changes to eBay are hard to program correctly all the time. It is eBay's fault for all the changes but the poor Turbo Lister programming team has a huge challenge to keep the program running. It is amazing that they do so well with the things they have to do in such a short time line.

I am learning more about the Turbo Lister program and how to use it. I always backed up my listings made online with it for an archive using the Listing Activity. I never had any copies of the original listings in Turbo Listing inventory. So I have always been copying from Listing Activity.  That is why I know about this problem.

[msmaggie060]

Thanks for posting the answer pocomo. I have spent the evening looking up my photos in Adobe and I think will be worth the time to put original photos back in my listings.  Any that I can't find easily I'll just have to re-photograph. Its going to take me a few days but hopefully I'll get it all done so I can list again.

This has cost me a whole week of listings and lost sales!