You are able to modify text in your listing descriptions in bulk from the batch editor. Point your mouse over the "Selling" link in the upper left corner of any page, then select "Batch edit items" from the drop-down. Click on the "Text editing" tab to the left of the toolbox at the top of the page.
There are two main text modifications; either a text replace, or a text append/prepend. Both modify the description for whatever items you have selected in the batch editor. Further explantion is given below.
Replace Text from Description
This allows you to replace text with other text in an item description. The text you replace can be pure HTML or just standard text. If the replace is case sensitive, then the replace will consider capitalization in determining what to replace. That is, if you replaced the word "pony" and checked the "case sensitive" box, then the sentence "Pony is shiny." would not change, but the sentence "The pony went to graze" would. Note that replaces cannot be undone, so be sure of your replace before clicking "Apply changes."
- A very common question we hear is that "I tried to replace text but nothing happened." There are two reasons that account for almost all such occurrences. The most common reason is that you need to be certain that the string you are looking to replace exactly matches the description text that has been saved for your item. If you just go to the item listing page (the page buyers use to look at your item) and copy text from there, you could miss a bunch of special characters that are in the item's description but not shown by your web browser (non-breaking spaces and such). The best way to make sure your string to be replaced is correct is to go edit one of the items from which you plan to replace text, and copy the text you want to replace from the description box on the edit item form. This will ensure that you get all special characters that might not be shown by your browser.
- The other factor to be aware of is that if you're editing more than a handful of items at once; the edit will be performed asynchronously, and it will take at least a few minutes to be processed.
This functionality lets you add one or more lines either to the beginning or the end of your item descriptions. Since it is part of the batch editor, it can update the descriptions for multiple items at once.
Append or Prepend Text
When are some good times to use it? Often when sellers first setup their booth, they want to add some notes about their policies to their items (or better still, they want to add a link in their items to their Booth Details page, so they don't clutter up their item descriptions with redundant text). Sometimes a user wants to go on vacation and leave a note about their items. Sometimes there are shipping notes that you want to add to items all at once (e.g "Ships to lower 48 states only"). And so on.
How Does it Work?
The text that you choose to prepend (add to the beginning of your description) or append (add to the end of your description) on your item description is added to the beginning or end of your description. We also remember what the text was that you added, so that it can be updated later. For example, say you append the text "Steak not included" to all your items. If later you realized that steak was included on some items, you could return to the batch editor, select the "Add text to end of items' descriptions" option and leave the text to append blank, then update your items. The line about "Steak not included" would be removed from all selected items.
Exceptions, and More Details Than You Should Care About
If after appending text to an item, you go and edit the item so that you add text after the appended text, we would still remove the text you had added while batch editing the item. That is, if you went into the individual edit item page and wrote "But chicken is included" after the "Steak not included" line, then you returned to the batch editor and changed the appended text, the bit about "Steak not included" would change, and the "But chicken is included" text would remain intact.