Editing Product Description Fields
The description is the main block of text that explains your product on the product detail pages. You can use Ablestar Bulk Product Editor to modify product descriptions in bulk.
Choose if you prefer the 'In-App Edit' or 'Spreadsheet' method:
1. In-App Edits
There are several edit options available to bulk edit your product description fields:
Removing Text from HTML
A common support request is to remove a section of text from the description. For example, each description might have a sentence about the shipping times that needs to be deleted.
Traditionally, we've recommended a Search/Replace edit to delete the text you're looking for. This works sometimes but can get tricky if there's HTML and special characters involved.
We’ve introduced two new dropdown options that should help with this in the case that you are having issues using search replace when HTML is present:
- Remove text from a word to the end
- Remove text up to and including a word
These will look for the word (or HTML string) you specify and then remove everything before or after that text, including the text itself. We've found this to be a more reliable way than the search/replace to remove content from the start or end of descriptions.
(Note: This method will also close any open HTML tags)
Go more in depth with How to Edit Text fields here.
2. Spreadsheet Edits
Prep your spreadsheet to include new product description data to replace existing data:
When setting product descriptions with a spreadsheet make sure that all new lines and characters are properly quoted or escaped. A quick way to verify this is to open up the file in Excel (or Google Sheets) and confirm that product descriptions don't leak into adjacent cells.
All new or modified data that is found on the spreadsheet will be processed and added to your store. The system will recognize when there is new or updated vendor data present on the spreadsheet.
✅ Tips and Troubleshooting
- The product description is stored in HTML, not plain text.
- The HTML in the editor may slightly modify (and break) the search/replace function.
- If you have issues with search/replace functions, try using the "Remove text from a word to the end" or "Remove text up to and including a word" options which look for and eliminate HTML strings in addition to text.
- Refer to the related article, for additional HTML tips, if you are having problems getting the description to look how you want.
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