Certain fields in the Bulk Upload process require their data to be entered in specific ways that are not always immediately obvious. This page should help to document those:

The price field is numeric-only, and its numbers should be entered in American-style syntax and without a thousands separator. In other words, "$15564.85" and "15,564.85" are both incorrect – the value in that case should simply read "15564.85"

Precurrency and Postcurrency symbols (e.g. "$" and "USD," respectively) have their own columns, and should be set up as such, and NOT part of the main price column

<tip c n>NOTE: The same numeric-only convention applies to all Auction-type price fields, as well (buy now, minimum bid, reserve price, etc)</tip>

When uploading to multiple categories from a single file, you must specify the category for each listing. This must be in a single column, and can take the format of either the category name or ID number.

Important: When using the category name, only an EXACT match will work – the source file must spell the category name exactly as it appears in the database. Also note that is is possible to configure multiple categories in the core software with the same name; the bulk uploader will arbitrarily pick the first category it finds whose name matches the given data, so if you use multiple categories named the same, be sure to specify category by ID number when bulk uploading. You can find a category's ID number in parentheses next to its name on the Category Setup admin page.

Optional Fields of type "date" should have their date specified in the format YYYYMMDD. January 16, 2012, for instance, would be 20120116

With multi-level fields you only need to include the lowest level value within the csv data. For example if you had a multi-level field for Make and Model of cars. The first level would be Make and the second level would be model. So if you had data like this:

Chevrolet (make) > Impala (model)

You only need to include "Impala" within the csv data and assign that field to the multi-level field. If for instance you happen to include make in one column and model in another column of your csv data just assign the column that contains the model to the multi-level field in the bulk upload configuration and the software will assign "Impala" at the "model level" and auto assign "Chrevrolet" at the make level.

This is a comma-delimited list of all the image URLs to use for each listing. This functions the same as using each of the "Image URL #" columns, but combines them into one column. For example, this column's data for a given listing might read:

"http://example.com/images/mypic1.jpg,http://example.com/images/mypic2.jpg,http://example.com/images/mypic3.jpg"

You can further shorten the required data by using one of the "Base Image Path" settings (see below).

This works exactly like the Image List, but for videos. The data may be in any format supported by the front-end video uploader. E.g., either "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" or simply "dQw4w9WgXcQ"

You can specify a "base" path to your images in one of two locations. DO NOT USE THEM BOTH. Those places are either the "Base Image Path" setting on Step 1 of the upload process, or by setting a column of the upload data to be the "Base Image URL" on Step 2. The Step 1 path setting applies to EVERY listing in the source file, while the Step 2 base url setting may be different for each listing. Here are some examples of ways the two settings can both be useful:

<tip c h>

• Base Image Path (Step 1): "http://example.com/images/"
• Listing 1 "Base Image URL": NONE!
• Listing 1 "Image List:" "mypic1.jpg,mypic2.jpg,mypic3.jpg"
• Listing 2 "Base Image URL": NONE!
• Listing 2 "Image List:" "mypic4.jpg,mypic5.jpg,mypic6.jpg"

</tip>

<tip c h>

• Base Image Path (Step 1): NONE!
• Listing 1 "Base Image URL": "http://example.com/images/"
• Listing 1 "Image List:" "mypic1.jpg,mypic2.jpg,mypic3.jpg"
• Listing 2 "Base Image URL": "http://example.net/media/pictures/"
• Listing 2 "Image List:" "yourpic24.jpg,yourpic67.jpg,yourpic48.jpg"

</tip>

The surest way to bulk upload an image is to give the uploader its fully-qualified, public URL (e.g. "http://example.com/images/mypic1.jpg"). If the image is already uploaded to the local server AND you are using the "Better Quality" (not "Faster") image upload method, you also have the option to specify the local path instead (e.g. "/var/www/html/images/mypic1.jpg")

You may use the bulk uploader to specify a geographic region for each listing. To do so, specify the lowest-level region for each listing. You can specify either the Region ID number (shown next to each region in the Geographic Setup > Regions page) or the name of the region in text form. If your site has multiple regions with identical names, it is recommended to use ID numbers instead of names, to ensure exactly the correct regions are used.

You can specify which of a user's storefront categories a bulk uploaded listing should go into. This requires the use of that category's ID number. The ID number may be found in the URL of the given category's page on the front-end. For instance, with a URL of http://example.com/index.php?a=ap&addon=storefront&page=home&store=50&category=379, you would enter "379" in the bulk upload source file.

This should be a single text string containing the name of an option group

e.g. To add user selections for shirt size, enter:

Shirt Size

<tip c n>Tip: for the next four fields, be sure to use a consistent order within each field. To help illustrate this point, we'll demonstrate a single set of options throughout.</tip>

A comma-separated list of names for each option in this group, in the correct display order

e.g. To add Small, Medium, and Large as choices for shirt sizes, enter:

Small,Medium,Large

A comma-separated list of added costs for each option in this group, in the correct display order. Numbers only – do not include precurrency or postcurrency symbols

e.g. To add no cost to the buyer for choosing a Small or Medium shirt, and $0.50 for choosing Large, enter:

0.00,0.00,0.50

A comma-separated list of file slots for each option in this group, in the correct display order. Integers only.

e.g. To associate image 1 with Small shirts, image 2 with Medium shirts, and image 3 with Large shirts, enter:

1,2,3

A comma-separated list of quantities for each option in this group, in the correct display order. Integers only.

e.g. If you have 5 Small shirts, 2 Medium shirts, and 16 Large shirts, enter:

5,2,16

This one can be a bit tricky. It accepts a comma-separated list in this format: option name 1+option name 2=quantity of 1 and 2

To give an example, if adding 3 small, black shirts; 5 large, red shirts; and 7 large, black shirts, you would use this expression:

small+black=3,large+red=5,large+black=7

You are not limited to pairs of options. I.e., small+black+smelly=1 would work (though we don't recommend selling "smelly" shirts in the first place… ;) )

If you use the automatic title field from other fields feature as described here in the software you can still do that within the bulk uploader feature within a specific upload.

You would do field matching as normal through the second step to the bulk upload process and then set the fields to use for the title within step 3 of the bulk upload process. So if you use site wide optional field 1, 2 and 3 to create your title you will need to populate those fields within step 2 of the upload process and then set those fields to populate the title within step 3 of the bulk upload process. Look for the following within the step 3 page of the bulk upload process:

and then click the add a field button to start setting up each field to populate the title and you will end up with something like the following if you used site wide optional field 1, 2 and 3 to populate the title field: