How To Duplicate Product Descriptions?

I am a french Canadian designer so please forgive me if my english is not perfect! I would like to know if there is a way to duplicate product sheet for similar model or if we have to restart from a new product sheet at each new model. I see people here with a lot of products in their shop. Maybe you have few tricks or advice to share with newbies like me!!

Thank you in advance,
Frank
www.frebird.ca

Hey! Welcome to Shapeways! Your English looks good to me.

As far as I know, there is currently no way to do this. It is something desperately needed though!

We do have an API, but I know nothing about it and what it can do. @stonysmith might have some tips and tricks though. You could always open 2 browser tabs and copy paste details.

Thank you Mr 4eva! It is exactly the better way I have found yet to go a bit faster by Opening two browser tabs. It helps but honestly I will not post 500 items that way! We should be able to duplicate an item then change the model and specific info.

+1 for this. The most tedious part is posting the product details over and over for 10 similar but different products.

Isn't that by definition, the problem? If they are different, Shapeways can't guess what the difference may be. What YOU want different from one model to the next is not what STONY might want different between any two items.

If they gave us a "clone" function, it'd still have the wrong description, wrong price, or wrong something else that would still require visiting each page. There is also a HUGE problem in that you must wait thru a delay between uploading a new model and retrieving the prices so you can set your markups. That problem alone has held me up from working up some true automation tools.

Yes, I can guide you through a lot of wizardry with the API, but you're going to have to know/learn some programming to make it work. Is that in your skill set? Is that something you want to learn?

Spoiler alert: I have a "program" that can open any number of product pages back into the browser all at the same time. I used it quite a bit to setup the Facets on large chunks of models at one time.. allowing me to get most of my Facets entered.

But, it's not for newbies. At best, you have to have Python, worst, you have to have another tool that I favor.
You are going to have to tailor it for YOUR "differences".

Being able to apply different templates to new products might make more sense than a direct duplication. Then it would only require a small effort to correct a few items like description and tags if necessary. Of course this leads to my ever present cry of freedom! for the ability to specify a straight mark-up amount for all materials. I'd rather apply the effort of mentally calculating every damn final price in my head to filling out all the other fields like tags, facets, etc.

Where a direct duplication might make more sense is if shoving off a class of products to a new expansion store. Such a copy could include everything such as print histories, although it might be considered more of a transfer than a duplication.

Easy there Stonysmith, no one is challenging your programming expertise. I'm allowed to comment on something I'd like to see added to the capabilities of the website and uploading process. I also don't need to be a programmer or have 30 years of Python experience to do so.

I did mention the process was tedious but I'm clearly not the only one who'd like a bit more user friendly options without having to take doctorate level courses on the newest programming language. Thanks.

The process is tedious, but it works at the end of the day which is what matters. Cheers.

I wasn't speaking of my expertise.. I was referring to the fact that some folks have asked for help and then said "oh.. you mean CODE?"

All I'm saying is that "User Friendly" depends all upon who the user is. <GRIN>

Approaching 2020. Any ability to duplicate a simple product to save time on some of these settings? I simply want to change the size of a few models and offer options but am finding that I need to enter EVERY field again and thinking the process could be a lot easier. Any options to clone or duplicate an item and I can comb through and make sure it's all correct? It seem this has been a request for a few years now.

Same here. Please implement this - it is just a needed feature.

I add quite a few new items every day at the moment. Often main differences are scale and title. I prefer not to use the variant option, as often small detail differences between what is basically same design.
Anyway, I just create all the text I require in a text file, switch it to a word file(fixes links) then cut and paste into description box. Found it easier to alter outside SW . I estimate this way cuts insertion time by half at least. I also end up with documentation myself, which I can use as basis for items in future.

I too use the cut & paste option from a Word doc, but there is a lot to be said for a "clone" function that copies over all the settings for scale, subject (first find "miniatures", then "vehicles", then "military", then "1:35", then "1939-1945", then "USA" every time gets a bit tedious!) etc so I can then edit the ones that need changed. If it automatically un-ticked the "Visible" and "For Sale" boxes that would prevent any mishaps. Sure, once I choose the model I'd have to wait for it to resolve costs before I adjusted the mark-up, but smoothing out all the other stuff would be such a bonus. And recreating all the tags each time is a PITA - why can't it offer up my most recently-used ones? But in the grand scheme of things there are bigger things for SW to fix first...

First click the "Source" button then copy and paste that into the new page "Source" funtion.
That will keep all your formatting in-tact.