Bulk Scan eBay-hosted Photos
eBay is throttling this tool, sometimes denying access to listings. Access may stop a few pages into the scan and purple failures will appear. Please space out smaller batches at different times.
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This tool will scan each listing, locate the eBay photos and mark them as large enough to zoom,
too small for zoom, or under 500px and no longer eBay-compliant.
Significantly older photos that eBay has moved through various naming conventions
may no longer display correctly in listings. This tool will attempt to identify and find displayable versions.
When it does so, it will mark them as broken photos so that you can correct them.
Additionally, the tool will identify self-hosted photos that did not rehost on eBay servers
and are still delivered from external servers. Since eBay does not support Zoom on external photos,
you may want to try uploading those again.
This tool will scan up to 10,000 publicly viewable items from eBay search. The search can be increased by scanning from each direction: oldest first and then newest first. Scanning while items are ending or renewing may cause skips or overlaps in retrieved data. The tool will mark overlaps, but can not identify skips.
To scan non-public listings, like "Adult" items and "Out of stock" items, or to fetch more than 10,000 items, sign up for eBay's free File Exchange and obtain a spreadsheet of items from File Exchange [screenshot]. Choose "File Exchange CSV" from this tool's country drop-list to open a box where your File Exchange data can be pasted [screenshot]. To avoid browser overload, you may want to divide File Exchange data into groups of 10K items (or fewer if your photos are large or many), and run each group separately through this tool.
The tool will scan listings one page at a time and will produce color-coded rows displaying the types of photos in each listing. When the scan completes, color-coded lists will categorize listings by types of photo issues found. A report option allows exporting various types of spreadsheets and script data.
After clicking the button to fetch and load your eBay items, retrieval may take up to two minutes for long lists. Page buttons will eventually appear and you may then begin the actual scan of loaded items.
Manual Scan: The tool scans 20 items per page. To scan manually and take your time reviewing the results, click a single page button. The listing photos will load into the page and the tool will measure and report their sizes. The results will be added to a summary table at the bottom.
Auto Scan: The AutoScan button will automatically step through all your listings and will display and measure your photos without allowing any time to review the results of each page, although you may manually step back through the pages after an AutoScan completes. An AutoScan of 10,000 items may require 2 hours or more, depending on the number and size of photos in each listing. If each listing has multiple photos at full size, scanning can consume many hours. As each page completes, the summary results will build into a table below the scan grid. Various Reports are available to save the scan results, which include item number and title, image urls, and image sizes.
Fast Scan: The FastScan button starts an automatic scan that retrieves only the URLs for photos, without measuring image sizes or displaying images in the grid. This may be useful when capturing eBay URLs for other purposes, or for determining if photos are eBay-hosted or self-hosted. This is a much faster scan because the images are not loaded, so a scan of 10,000 items might require about an hour. FastScan photos will display a size of 8000 as a placeholder value in the reports and will appear in the "Good Size" column when not measured. Do not mistake this as an indication that the photo is actually OK, as it may not be. When the scan completes, individual pages can be selected for review. If full dimensions are desired, click the "Cancel" button to turn off FastScan mode and then subsequent page visits will force photos to load and be measured on those selected pages. Alternatively, a subsequent AutoScan would start the time-consuming process of loading and measuring all photos.
No Scan These items were not yet scanned, or failed to return results when scanned. Transmission interruptions or scanning stale spreadsheet data can cause rows to remain unscanned.
Fix Small Undersized photos are less than 500 px on the long side. They must be replaced or enlarged to comply with eBay mandates. Previously grandfathered listings may fall into this category.
Broken The eBay-hosted image failed to appear in one or more of the available sizes. The tool attempts to find a displayable size for reconstruction to help with your replacement. The tool flags these as needing attention. Items in this column also appear in one of the size columns, so these counts are not included in the totals.
Ok Small Small photos are between 500 and 799 pixels and are compliant, but will not zoom (and will not supersize if under 640 pixels).
Good Size Good sized photos are 800 pixels or larger and will both zoom and supersize. The maximum eBay stores as a master is 1600 pixels.
Stock Img Stock eBay catalog photo. No action required, even if undersized. However, if additional photos with issues appear in the same listing, the stock photo will lose that status when updating all photos through bulk tools.
External Externally hosted images did not transfer to eBay hosting. They are still being delivered from an external server. They will not zoom and may slow page loading. Items in this column also appear in one of the size columns, so these counts are not included in the totals.
Overlaps The tool retrieved the same item twice and ignored these extras. Overlaps and skips are normal if listings are relisting or aging off quickly as the tool retrieves items from eBay. This will not occur when using File Exchange Data.
Variations Items with variations require manual editing or manual data manipulation to revise images. This tool will pull in all photos for the variations, but will not be able to correctly sort photos to each variation. Thus, the seller would need to re-assign specific photos to each variation. To assist, each CSV report will include a "Variation" column. The seller may sort the report by that column to break the report into two parts: 1) those items with variations that should be updated manually or that require spreadsheet attention prior to bulk revision, and, 2) those without variations that readily support bulk revision. When Variations appear in File Exchange reports, the variation row will be assigned "Info" status to prevent automatically modifying a variation listing without user-intervention.
Stock Photos While "stock" photos from eBay's catalog are exempt from sizing requirements, they will lose that status if photos within that listing are bulk updated. The photo will become a standard upload that has sizing requirements. If the listing is manually edited, the stock status can remain.
This tool will provide inline photo enlargements for images that fall below the 500-pixel minimum. A seller may use the enlarger tool on one listing at a time in the scanner grid and may manually update listings with the repaired 502-pixel photos.
Bulk enlarging is also available within the File Exchange report that is labeled "FE Bad Listings", which includes only listings with problem photos. That report will capture any listing with an undersized or non-displayable photo and will generate a report that is formatted for File Exchange. A column will include resized photos that pass through our server. Because of the way File Exchange works, all photos, not just bad photos, must be included for any single listing where photos are revised.
Any listing with Variations will be given "Info" status in the File Exchange report, instructing File Exchange to ignore the row. This will give the user the opportunity to manually format Variation rows for File Exchange or manually edit those listings. Additionally, images that are blank will also be given "Info" status and it will be up to the user to provide eBay with a repaired photo.
Repetitive File Exchange requests for photo enlargements from our server may result in our server not delivering the photos to File Exchange in a timely manner. This can cause loss of your photo and overloading our server. While our goal is to assist sellers, we need to work within the limitations of our server. Dozens of enlargements should not be an issue, and a few hundred small photos should not pose a problem. But thousands at a time may become a problem. Contact us if you need to bulk revise photos. If you have your own server, we can assist in transloading the photos to your own server for upload to File Exchange, ensuring more durable photo delivery.
After a scan has completed, reports can be created using a variety of selection and formatting options.
Note that the URLs can be captured, but may expire.
For preservation of actual images, the photos should be viewed in a browser and then copied to your computer.
The scripted report may best serve this purpose.
General CSV reports are informational in spreadsheet format.
Each photo URL populates its own cell for easy manipulation.
File Exchange (FE) requires image URLs be pipe-delimited in a single data cell.
Additionally, the photos must be hosted on an external server.
The FE reports will organize the data in that fashion,
but eBay URLs will most likely populate the spreadsheet and eBay URLs can not be uploaded to File Exchange.
The seller must provide proper non-eBay substitutions for the image URLs
if feeding the data back into File Exchange.
For listings that still contain seller-hosted images,
those seller-hosted photos will correctly populate the picture upload field (PicURL)
so that the seller may again attempt eBay hosting.
For undersized photos and for recoverable versions of those lost by eBay server changes,
the FE reports will include a column of resized photos externally delivered through our server.
There will be no PicURL revision data for compliant photos or for missing "blank" photos.
Those rows without a populated PicURL field are invalid File Exchange uploads as-is,
so the report gives those rows "Info" status to be ignored by File Exchange,
and the user must make proper adjustments if they want to use those rows.
Additionally, whenever Variations are detected, those rows are given "Info" status
because more work is required to format variation photos.
Is is up to the seller to properly configure the variations for File Exchange
or else manually revise the photos in those variation listings.
Javascript data is organized into an array of items containing photo URLs and basic viewer code.
This format is especially convenient for viewing the actual full-sized images in a thumbnail spread.
Those skilled in scripting can paginate or manipulate the data appropriately.
The scripted array also includes enlargements where required.
Those enlargements are offered through our server and should be captured and rehosted as needed for use elsewhere.
Our server does not host the images and provides only a pass-through enlargement,
which means the source of the photo could evaporate after 90 days unless captured and rehosted.
Zip option produces a handy 3-column spreadsheet that can be
sent to the Bulk Photo Zip tool at the click of a button.
The Photo Zip tool can then process the spreadsheet and generate batches that will be
sent to the server for zipping and download so that you may archive your eBay photos.
IMPORTANT: If the FastScan or AutoScan has not run, or has not completed,
the unscanned photos will be missing from the batch.