READ TO THE END - SOLOUTION
I reopened my shops today after Christmas. In November 2022 I used bulk edit (256 listings in one go) to add a five line, three sentence NOTICE to the front of all my listing descriptions advising about the Royal Mail strikes & warning of a delay in postage. On 6th December I added another bulk edit statement (one sentence over two lines of text) explaining that I was withdrawing Royal Mail as a postage option due to the disruption and delayed parcels, giving the alternative options and apologising for any inconvenience.
As there are not any imminent strike days I needed to remove the notice today. I have re-added the Royal Mail option so the statement is not only misleading it is an outright lie.
Bulk editing would not remove text from the description. Bulk editing would not change text from the description.
I tried on Google, Opera and Edge, on W10 desktop and Macbook. My cookies and cache are set to clear daily at close of business.
I have 245 listings on one shop and 232 on another shop. It would take hours to remove individually.
I read about the failures of bulk edit on the community forums and then I asked on chat this morning when it is due to be fixed.
The person I was on chat with said 'he wasn't aware of the problem'! and suggested I try the usual fixes. As I had started my chat saying what I had already done I asked what other fixes there were? He said try another Browser! So three of the main browsers do not work but advice is to try another! He then said I could clear my Cache! I had already told him that this had been done the day before. Etsy was my first task since.
I repeated my question - "when it is due to be fixed?" adding that the forums all referred to Etsy knowing about the problem for a couple of weeks at least. He then said someone from technical support would contact me but when pushed he couldn't say when or when it would be raised with that department. I knew that meant no phone call.
I could have spent the day removing the notice manually from each listing OR I could spend some time tring to get through Etsy's defences and try to speak to someone who will actually look into this OR I could use my knowledge of programming and HTML to try to work it out myself.
As I had already tried editing two and three listings at a time I knew it wasn't from overloading the bulk edit so instead I tried bulk editing four listing descriptions at a time but only deleting one sentence at a time. That worked! Through trial and error I found that I could delete one whole line on a page (40) listings so eventually I worked up to all 245 listings, as long as I only deleted one sentence it worked. Where the sentence contained any special characters (not alpha numerical) or where it contained a webpage address this had to be deleted on it's own.
TIP - On opening the bulk edit you will see a sample edit. Copy the text you want to remove and paste into the box above, if it is capable of being removed it dissapears from the sample edit. If it doesn't dissapear try removing a section of the text at a time from the box. When the same text in the sample dissapears you know that it will work. Proceed to press 'Apply' at the bottom.
I succesfully removed one sentence, of up to three lines, in bulk edit for 245 listings at a time.
I will try to use this logic to other actions in Bulk Edit in the next few days and will post if any diffferent.
I have called or used Chat a few times about Bulk Edit problems without Etsy being able to help. I can't believe they don't have the answer when I managed to work this solution out. I am a 58 year old woman, self taught in coding and very basic programming, I learned what I needed to know to run my business.
I hope this help someone, it may lead to other solutions. When I have more time I will cut it down, I typed as I tried solutions so sorry for the waffle. I now have an hours lost working time to make up. But at least it is only a hour.
