Saved Auctiva listings will not post due to active content in description

Hello javacentric -

the content of the message indicates that the description for the listing in question contains active content, which eBay no longer allows. If you are unable to identify the active content in the HTML of your description, please file a support case from under the Help tab of the site with the title of the saved listing or listings in question and we'll be happy to assist you with locating the content that is problematic, as it sounds like you may have something in the listing that was previously acceptable to eBay but is no longer compliant with the new standards.

- Craig

My listings are doing the same thing, and I am getting the same error pop-up. Even when they are made from scratch. There is no active content in them I am quite certain. Please help.

I am having the same problem. I put in a ticket last night and am still waiting for help. I also tested it to be sure I had no active content and it had passed. I have been waiting to list and wasn't able to either because of the custom specifics problem and now this. I would really like some help please.

Hello Picturelover,

We made a change yesterday that now stops any active content from being posted to eBay from Auctiva. It appears that your Seller Details Profile contains active content that is now being blocked by our system when you try to post your listing.

Our Support Team should respond to your Support Case soon with the exact details on what the Active Content is and how to remove it.

-Johnnie Q

I am having the same problem as others indicate. I can no longer post listings to ebay. In every instance the active content issue is the problem. I have filed a support case 3 days ago, have added to it two times and still not heard from auctiva support. For two days I have resorted to listing my items without auctiva, doing it directly thru ebay. I am beginning to wonder why I am paying auctiva for their services

Yes, I have been a paying Auctiva customer for many, many years. Now I need help to even list from Auctiva! All my saved listings for BIN and auction cannot be posted or even saved! You have removed active content from the active listings, but what are we to do with stored saved listings on Auctiva??? They still have active content in them, and many sellers use the saved ads to post again!!! So are all the saved ads now useless??? I have over 1,000 saved auctions, which I revise and reuse almost daily!!!

When you said not to worry, but that your technicians were going to remove active content - we assumed you meant all Activa listings (active and saved). Now we all have big problems as you didn't say that ONLY active listings would be fixed...

and now it's happening to me. I am getting this message:"The specified Description is invalid.
The specified Description contains active content."
I have tried taking the description and putting it into notepad, which should strip everything, then copying and pasting and I can't list.

I may have found a temporary fix. i copy the description into notepad. Go back to the description and delete everything. Then click source, above the description and again delete everything. Go back to notepad and paste the description in. It's a workaround but I finally got it to save.

SOOO frustrated right now.

We're also attempting to relist our weekly auctions from our saved listings (over 1800) and are getting the same active content error. I can remove the offending code one by one, but there is not enough time in the day, only to have to repeat the same next Sunday.

Are there any workarounds whatsoever? Perhaps find and replace wildcards that will allow us to remove the code from the thousands of saved listings we rely on every day?

Hello Community -

Apologies for the difficulties!

Please note that our active content tool only operates on active listings on eBay that are eligible for revision - it makes no changes to data in your saved listings and the release that Johnnie Q. referred to prevents new listings from getting up to eBay or being saved with active content in them. So, if you try to post a listing from your Saved listings that has active content in the description or is using a profile (including a seller details profile) that has active content in it, it will not post to eBay (or save in the case of a new listing) until that content has been removed.

Unfortunately, there is no way for us to tell without having a look at your listings where the active content is. So, if you are unable to determine where an issue lies with listings receiving such a message, please feel free to file a support case with some examples of where you are encountering the difficulty so our support team can assist you.

- Craig

This is so incredibly disappointing. For over a year we have asked how to prepare and we were assured that this change would be accommodated. Like others, I have thousands in saved listings. For the past few months I have redone my saved listings only to find that a couple of weeks ago new templates came out. I am completely frustrated at all the time I spent re-doing saved listings all for naught.

Hi Craig.

Can the support team copy a single description from a live listing with "clean" html to each of the saved listings we have saved? The description would be the same throughout.

Hello POTP -

Unfortunately no, we would not be able to do so for you.

There is a bulk tool available in the Advanced Edit for Saved listings that will allow you to make changes to the Description as a Find and Replace, but please keep in mind that the tool does require the related HTML for any text you are changing, and, depending on the size of your descriptions, the tool may not be able to accommodate an entire description in one pass.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

- Craig

Actually, the tool you refer to will not allow multiple passes as each time you attempt to find and replace one piece of code, your active content flag refuses to make the change as the resulting description contains active content.

Hello again,

Apologies for that!

When I tested this initially, I tried it with a listing that had only a small element of active content in it that I was able to remove in a single pass, so the tool operated as expected and the content was removed. However, I have since taken another look where the content was either too long for a single pass or there was more than one element in the HTML (which would require more than one pass) and I see what you refer to.

I have created a trouble ticket for our engineers to look into this issue with the Advanced Edit for the Description area for further investigation and will update this thread as soon as more information on this issue becomes available.

- Craig

Thank you Craig! We all are waiting desperately for an Advanced Edit tool for the Description to rid our saved descriptions of multiple active content so we can at the very least SAVE the listing. And maybe even POST it!!!

quote:

Originally posted by Auctiva Craig:
Hello Community -

Apologies for the difficulties!

Please note that our active content tool only operates on active listings on eBay that are eligible for revision - it makes no changes to data in your saved listings and the release that Johnnie Q. referred to prevents new listings from getting up to eBay or being saved with active content in them. So, if you try to post a listing from your Saved listings that has active content in the description or is using a profile (including a seller details profile) that has active content in it, it will not post to eBay (or save in the case of a new listing) until that content has been removed.

- Craig

I wish you guys had told us about this way before eBay implemented its change of policy! Auctiva reassured all its paying clients that the eBay changes would be handled by Auctiva, so we need not worry about it as you would take the active content out... So we all relaxed, and let you get on with it. At no stage did you say: Auctiva will fix all your ACTIVE listings, and you have to fix yourself the SAVED listings that have active content!!! And now we have just found this out AFTER the policy change has been implemented by eBay, and we are all floundering around wondering what is going wrong, and what to do!!! You may lose lots of customers now, from this cock-up...

Hello javacentric,

Apologies that our prior communications did not make clear that Saved Listings were not going to be addressed in the same way that Active Listings were regarding active content, however, please note that our messages regarding the removal of active content did specify Active Listings.

The issue noted with Find and Replace is being looked into, and we are also looking into possibilities regarding other potential ways of helping to remove active content from Saved Listings. I'll update this thread should more information regarding such a possibility become available.

- Craig

Thank you very much Craig! We certainly appreciate your help in the matter. The ease of reposting saved listings and the use of the auto-relist feature is the single biggest reason why we love Auctiva and recommend it to friends often. It truly is a wonderful service and we appreciate it immensely.

We were up past 2 a.m. on Sunday night frantically trying to edit and save and post nearly 500 auctions that were scheduled to auto-relist/repost and had no idea that even though eBay would no longer display active content in users listings (shown in their before and after preview button), but that Auctiva would refuse to post the listings altogether. I'm just glad my wife checked the listings that evening before we went to bed, as the lost revenue would have been hard to stomach.

quote:

Originally posted by Auctiva Craig:
Hello javacentric,

Apologies that our prior communications did not make clear that Saved Listings were not going to be addressed in the same way that Active Listings were regarding active content, however, please note that our messages regarding the removal of active content did specify Active Listings.

- Craig

Hmmm, that 'however' sounds like a retraction of the apology. So Auctiva did 'specify Active Listings' (N.B. only), and anything else had to be imagined by your customers/clients, who didn't even really know what 'active content' really meant! That's a cop out. If it was made clear then you would not have made all the sellers have heart attacks when their saved listings suddenly (on editing) would not save or post. And avoid that deluge of support cases filed...

Hello Community -

There has been an update regarding this issue with active content in Saved Listings.

We've made some changes that will now allow you to use Find and Replace (Advanced Edit for the Description area) will now allow you to make multiple passes for listings that contain active content. So, presently, you can you remove some elements and have that save so you can run the tool again to remove further elements if needed.

We are also developing a tool that will allow you to select saved listings to have the active content removed in the same way that the tool is operating on active listings. We expect to have this available in the near future and I will update this thread again as soon as we have more information regarding that tool available.

- Craig

Thank you Craig for following through.

This will help cut some time for us this weekend as we feverishly look forward to the saved listing active content removal tool.

Hello, this is a work around for. If the listing you are trying to edit is already posted on ebay, you can go to the listing in ebay, click on hlp to remove active content, then apply, but don't save the listing in ebay yet. Then click HTML, copy and and paste this active content free HTML back into auctiva. Hope this helps

Hello All,

I am following up to let you know that the tool for Saved Listings to have active content removed is now available within accounts.

You can find the tool under the Advanced Edit option on the Saved Listings page of your account. You select it by clicking on Advanced Edit after selecting a listing or group of listings; it is the last option in the Item Details section of the pull down menu.

Please note that this tool will operate only on the description area of your listings - this does not include a listing template or seller details profile you may have added to the listing and also note that there are no backups made of listings that have had the tool run over them.

- Craig

You can't get Advanced Edit when you are forced into using the old Saved Listings page!!! After doing a listing it often gives the error message:
"STOP We are sorry, but an error occured while trying to process your request. Please try again and if you continue to have trouble contact support."

And we then can't access the new Saved Listing page and have to revert to the old Saved Listing page if we want to list. So how are we supposed to get to the New Listing Page with the Advanced Edit section to look for Active Content in our descriptions???!!!

Hello javacentric -

We're sorry to hear that you have run into difficulty reaching the Advanced Edit tool. Unfortunately, you are correct and this tool is not available on the original version of the Saved Listings page. It is unclear what you refer to when you state that you are forced to use the older version of the page, as there should be no difficulty for you to use the current version; we are not aware of any issues working with the current version of the saved listings page. If you are unable to use the current version of the page, please file a support case providing all of the details of what you experience with it, including your browser and operating system information so we can look into it.

- Craig

Same problem with not saving the ad because it thinks it has active content. That has happened on over 200 of my listings. I got so frustrated I found that My work around was to go straight to EBAY, "relist through the EBAY website" and boom my listing was accepted, even added some new pictures, NO PROBLEM? But, I can't use AUCTIVA because of that darn error I keep getting on all my listings.

Hello mckenziesgold1 -

if you are running into the initial issue noted in this thread, you should be able to use the Advanced edit tool to have your descriptions checked for active content. Please note that the tool is not able to check the Seller Details profile or templates as they get added when a listing goes to post.

If you are encountering the same issue as noted by javacentric, where you are having difficulty accessing the current version of the Saved Listings page and are therefor having issues getting to Advanced Edit, please also file a support case with the details of what you are encountering so we can look into it for you.

- Craig