"should" is not very comforting.  😃

"will" would be better.

I'm still scared to try.

Sorry for the uncertain answer there. They will stay the same so long as you edit your library using the downloaded CSV file that includes your original items saved in  your item library. 

Click the "Import" button, and choose the Modify Item Library option. 

On the next pop up window, click on the "Download our template" link. This will export your item library CSV and allow you to edit items or add new items all together. 

As long as you update that same template that you downloaded, your edits as well as your item images will appear for you. 

Dang!

I followed your directions to the letter.  In fact just downloaded the file, opened in excel and then saved.

Yep, the pictures were reassociated - that is good.

Nope, some of the text comes back in with weird characters,  The big loser is an item with quotes (" ") around it.

Before:

This journal is perfect for recording thoughts that pop into our heads when our "big" journals are at home.

After:

This journal is perfect for recording thoughts that pop into our heads when our ���big�۝ journals are at home.

Luckily, I was able to upload the original download that was not opened and saved in excel.  Whew!

But I am now stuck with the inability to accomplish the objective of bulk altering a store items file.

More help needed, please!

dan

Glad to hear the images worked for you. 

I was able to replicate the issue with the quotation marks on my end as well. 

Quotations can cause a lot of trouble in spreadsheets, as Excel can read CSVs with quotation marks incorrectly sometimes. 

The solution I've found is to do a "Find" and "Replace All" command within Excel to replace the replacement characters with the correct quotations. 

• Export your item library
• Make all of the edits you need to make
• Find the cell that contains the replacement characters and copy the characters that have replaced the quotation marks
• Hit Command+F in Excel to pull up the Find box and paste the special characters you copied into the "Find what:" section
• Click "Replace" and type in a quotation mark in the "Replace with:" box. 
• Click "Replace All" and it should indicate that it's replaced all of the errors for you. 

You'll need to do this for both quotation marks, as each quotation mark is replaced with unique character sets. 

Once you complete this, save your .csv file then upload to your Item Library. It should pull over correctly. 

If not, let me know and I can escalate this over to our Engineering team to take a look. 

Thank you, EJ

I have run into this before with websites.  Some of the " " translate correctly when the template is downloaded and some are not.  It looks like a " " but the coding is for the other, strange characters.

I have found that "boilerplate text" that might have been generated in a "none plain text"  program will have the weird coding.  I think some of that crept in to my listings that I was copying and pasting from to build the Square store.

So, I looked at the spreadsheet and found the listing that have weird characters and noted the listing.  Then I returned to Square Store Management and changed just those with the offending " X".  I had to make a change of some type (delete the "X") and then save and then return to the listing and manully type in "X"

Those modified "X" downloaded correctly to Excel and the contaminated listings would not propogate back in the upload.  I could use your technique but sometimes Replace All can get you in trouble.  Also the stange characters were different in different listings.

Thanks for the advice!

OK, Weird-a-Rama

I decided to tackle the changes to the listings that have the weird "X" cahracters.

So I just Downloaded the file and opened in excel.  ALL were correct today.  No strange characters.

I saved the spreadsheet and then uploaded it and there was no contamination.

Something happened in the database that was not of my doing and now all the strange characters are gone.

That is a good thing but when unexplained things happen, that makes me nervous!  

Any thoughts?

dan

That could be explained by uploading the correct formatting to your Item Library, and the information being exported with the same character recognition style. 

There are a lot of variables that can happen when it comes to .csv imports and exports, so it's hard to pinpoint the exact root cause without seeing your process of creating your item library from the beginning. 

I'm so glad this is all resolved for you, as these types of issues can be very tricky. 

Hopefully this thread helps a seller that runs into the same issue in the future! 

EJ,

I'm attempting to use the import/export in order to clean out a boatload of retired items, but I got to this same question in my mind and stopped. If I export my library, delete rows of retired items, and then import the library using the "replace item library" function, will Square still map the photos I have uploaded to the "new" items (which are really existing unchanged items)? If the answer is "no," then the bulk import/export function loses a lot of its usefulness, and I'll have to delete each item individually through the website, which will take quite a while. Please advise, thanks!

@kaffehaus - Happy to help with this one. As long as you don't remove any information from the "token field," your photos should not be impacted by the replace functionality for those items that you keep. 

I ran into this same issue. Luckily I had very few photos at the time.

@KaliDava - Sorry to hear! This sounds like more of a bug than the expected behavior. If for some reason this happens again in the future, let us know. We can always open a case with our engineering team. 

I am running into the same problem. I have two square accounts and I am trying to import my library to the another account. However, the photos are not moved. I keep getting the following error;

"

The token for row: 2 is not recognized. Tokens for existing items should not be edited. To create a new item leave the token field blank and try again.

The token for row: 3 is not recognized. Tokens for existing items should not be edited. To create a new item leave the token field blank and try again.

.

.

.

.

"

Can you explain how to fix this? I don't make any changes to the token column in the file.

Thank you

Miné

Hello @mesen, this thread is about photo retention when editing or replacing items on an account. Rather than moving an item library to a new Square Account. Since the new Square Account has no photos associated with the item library there's nothing to be retained. 

Since you're working with a new item library have you tried removing the token completely for these items? The upload should treat them as new items and automatically assign a token.

My pictures did not save