Hello all:
After much trial and error in converting over 3,000 listings so far this month, I believe I have found a ,workflow that is efficient and error free that addresses the following issues:
1. How you re-number your stock items to the new 12 digit e-bay number, since the old numbers end once you end the old listings. This is an issue for those of you who pick orders for shipping by the e-bay number.
2. How you avoid duplicating listings, as early iterations of the listing migration tool (LMT) had duplicate drafts being created in some cases.
3. How to ensure that all listings are found and drafts are created.
4. Dealing with the problem of the drafts not containing the correct shipping policy.
5. Ending listings so that you don't get hit with the MC018 violation.
And so on.
When I first used the tool, I attempted to produce drafts for all 3,600 listings that I had that were in U.S. However, for some unknown reason, not all of them appeared in my drafts folder. Then the next time I tried it, I was able, with several re-freshes of the draft page to get them all to appear. The problem was that they would disappear at some random rate rather than 1 at a time as I processed them. So for example, even though I started with 3,600 drafts, I would get down to 0 after processing only 500 items. What was worse, was that the drafts were not in the same order as those on the pages of the LMT, so I couldn't tell what I had already processed, as it seems that the LMT takes quite a while to update and show an item as being processed. So what I do now is:
1. Go to the LMT and refresh. Once the listing appears, go to the display dropdown menu and select to sort by converted items. It will now display all your active listings.
2. Taking one page at a time, select all active listings, ignoring sold and unsolds. Select convert to CDN and enter your exchange rate. Select OK. Your drafts will be created.
3. Go to your draft folder and see if the drafts are there. If they aren't, refresh the page until the required number of drafts appears. Remember that because you are only dealing with one 50 item page at a time in your LMT, that the total number of drafts that should appear will be 50 minus the number of sold and unsold items you ignored.
Doing it this way will enable you to keep track of what you already processed and you can then work your way through the pages of the LMT.
For those of you who do not have to re-number your listings, the bulk processing feature should work. I don't know if it does because I have had to re-number each and every item in my inventory. To physically do this would take an inordinate amount of time, so what I have done is:
1. Use the "Export all listings" to create a CSV file. Once you have the file, open it and change it to XLS format. Select the item number column and re-format it to a number with no decimal places. This will now display you current item numbers.
2. There is a field in the spreadsheet in column E for the item title. You can cut and paste the item title from your draft that you are working on into the find and replace function in excel (highlight a cell in column E and hit control F) It will bring up the search box. Paste the description into that box). Hit "find next". It should take you to the item i the spreadsheet. If instead you get an error messsage "could not locate item requested" or something similar, try shortening the description and try again. It should take you to a series of similar items that you can toggle through until you find your item.
3. Once you have the old item number, insert a new column for your new number that will go right next to it as you complete your drafts.
4. Then open up two new tabs on your browser:
- one for your drafts, showing the current draft you are completing.
- one to search for current listings using the e-bay number. To access this, go to selling manager pro and in the middle of the screen is a hyperlink for "Active Listings". This will take you to a search screen where you can select "Item ID from the dropdown.
5. Once you have done this you are now ready to process your listings as follows:
a) Highlight the title of the draft listing you want to covert, Right click and select copy. Then go to your spreadsheet. Place the cursor on column E and hit cntr F. The search box should appear. Paste the description in this box and select find next. If it does not take you to this item, keep hitting find next until it takes you to the right item. When you get there, go to column A on that line, highlight the number that appears in that cell and right click copy.
b) go to the search tab that you opened up and paste the item number into the search box and hit search. This should bring up the current US dollar listing that you will be ending once you have processed the draft.
c) Go to the draft and select "complete". it will pull up the listing. Check it quickly for accuracy. I find that on my drafts the old US shipping policy is still shown, so I change it to my new CDN$ policy. Hit the buttons to approve and post the listing. When your screen saying "congratulations your item is listed", highlight the new item number. Right click copy.
d) Go back to your spreadsheet and past this new number next to the old one in the column you just created.
e) Go back to your search tab where the old listing now appears. There is a drop down menu next to it and the last item on that menu is "end listing". Select it and then agree to end the listing. You old listing is now ended. You can arrow back to get back to the search screen with two back clicks so that you can enter the next item number there.
f) To get back to your draft list, I go to "My e-bay" and then selling manager and then drafts from the screen that I was processing the draft in.
Repeat the above for all your listings. I know it seems cumbersome, but after you get a rhythm going you can process 20-25 listings in an hour. It's not fast, but this method is 100% error free.
Q~~_7.JPG "rainbow71113"){kind=avatar}
w~~_7.JPG "pjcdn2005"){kind=avatar}
