ShopSite Newsletter – November 2005

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LexiConn ShopSite Newsletter – November 2005
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In this month’s issue:
- HTML editor add-on for ShopSite backoffice
- US Postal Service shipping module improved
- Tip: Using Excel for database uploads

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HTML editor add-on

LexiConn now offers an add-on for the ShopSite backoffice that provides a separate web based graphical “What you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) html editor for quick editing and formatting of text fields in ShopSite. This program allows merchants to quickly create or edit html code in any ShopSite textbox using a graphical editor, thereby lessening the need to know html programming to make changes.

The HTML editor has many features, including the ability to:
- Upload images to and select images from the ShopSite “media” directory
- Easily create tables and advanced html code with a few clicks
- Format text, fonts, colors, styles
- Create links

If you wish to see an example of how the editor works, you may go to:
http://www.lexiconn.com/examples/htmleditor/

If you want to have this editor added to your ShopSite store, please send an email to support@lexiconn.com and we can add the editor to your account. There is no charge of any kind as this is a free add-on. All new ShopSite stores will have this editor installed by default.

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US Postal Service shipping module improved

The real-time US Postal Service (USPS) shipping module for ShopSite Pro stores has been upgraded. The new version adds more shipping options such as Media Mail, First Class Mail, and Parcel Post for domestic shipments, in addition to the standard Priority and Express Mail rates. It adds Airmail Letter Post, Surface Parcel Post, and Surface Letter Post for international shipping options to complement the original Airmail Parcel Post, Global Priority and Express mail rates).

If you currently use the real time US Postal service shipping module with your ShopSite Pro store and would like to have it upgraded to the new version, please let us know. This real-time shipping module is available free to any ShopSite client with ShopSite Pro version 6.2 or higher.

We also offer a FedEx real-time rate shipping module and it too can be installed at no additional cost. These shipping modules can work in conjunction with the built-in UPS real-time rates in ShopSite. Merchants can choose which real-time rates are returned, as well as adding options such as insurance, setting maximum box weights, etc… Full details can be found at:
http://www.lexiconn.com/shopsite/usps.html

For a complete list of ShopSite add-ons:
http://www.lexiconn.com/shopsite/shopsite_addons.html

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Tip: Using Excel for database uploads

Many merchants use Excel as a method to maintain the data for their products in ShopSite. Although Excel is not a true database program like Microsoft Access, it can be a handy tool for managing products and data. The problem arises when trying to get this Excel data into ShopSite via a database upload.

Excel tends to re-format text fields when you export to a tab delimited text file. Specifically, Excel will put quotation marks around text with commas in it, or text that has existing quotation marks in a field. The software also tries to make the text file smaller by deleting blank fields at the end of a row, which causes ShopSite to error out on an upload. There are two ways to work around these issues:

1. A little known trick that makes exporting excel data easier is a simple copy and paste. Open up a text editor such as Notepad, highlight all your fields in Excel, and copy and paste those fields into notepad. This will create a tab delimited text file in notepad already formatted, and avoids any issues with extra quote marks or missing tabs.

** NOTE: ** If you previously uploaded via the traditional Export option in Excel, using this method may change some product names, as no extra quotation marks will be present. If you set the Unqiue Identifier in ShopSite to Product Name instead of SKU, this could cause extra products to be added.

-OR-

2. The traditional method is to save the Excel file as a tab delimited text file. To avoid the dropping of blank fields and tabs, you can add a column to the end of all rows called “junk” and put an “X” in each field. This way Excel will not drop tabs at the end, as the last column will always have data in it. You can set ShopSite to ignore this field during an upload.

To remove the extra quotes that Excel adds, you can open the tab delimited text file in Microsoft Word and run a few commands to remove extra quotes. Please reference our Knowledgebase Article for more information on this procedure at:

http://support.lexiconn.com/kb/index.php?ToDo=view&questId=149&catId=38

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