paintpower
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posted on September 24, 2001 07:01:47 AM new
Now that I've been forced to upgrade to a Premier account and I'm being charged fees, I need to have a record of those fees for my accountant.
I downloaded the PayPal data for opening in a spreadsheet ... and YUCK! It is just a big bunch of garbled run together words and numbers, spilling over into other columns and totally unusable. Opened it in Works (my only spreadsheet program). Any suggestions from anyone? All I really need is the buyer's name, the date paid, total paid, fee charged, total paid to me.
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alanuk
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posted on September 24, 2001 10:40:36 AM new
I have only ever used Excel to open the download file. I chose to download the file as "Comma delimited" and this is supposed to work with any spreadsheet application. I have works on my PC at home I will check it out and let you know.
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katiyana
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posted on September 24, 2001 11:27:06 AM new
Another option would be to track your Paypal account on MS Money or a similar program....
But I've done what the previous poster described too - DL as a Comma Delimited file and open that in excel or any spreadsheet program - should work fine.
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paintpower
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posted on September 24, 2001 06:42:46 PM new
Since I don't have Excel, the spreadsheet program in Works is my only option. I've tried both versions of the download and both are just garbled information, some of it in the wrong columns, and totally unreadable. Guess I'll have to just write it off by hand the next time I'm in my PayPal account for something as I really need that fee information.
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alanuk
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posted on September 24, 2001 09:01:53 PM new
When I open it with Excel its perfect. Works however is a different story and I can see your problem. I have tried it with both comma and tab delimited files and its a total mess both ways. I will play around with it and see if I can find a way of making it better. I would put a support request in to Paypal, but dont hold your breath for a response.
If I find anything I will post it here for you.
A suggestion for Auctiva might be to also collect paypal fee's.
[ edited by alanuk on Sep 24, 2001 09:03 PM ]
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paintpower
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posted on September 25, 2001 05:39:11 AM new
alanuk: thanks for looking. Works is a pretty basic spreadsheet so guess it can't handle it. Good suggestion for Auctiva but those boys are running around over there in a big mess right now. Maybe when things settle down. Lots of sellers are ready to jump ship on them right now.
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wbbell
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posted on September 26, 2001 08:18:02 PM new
I was all ready to tell you how to do this in msworks - but then I downloaded my own paypal data and you're right! MS works can handle csv's and tab delimited fine - the problem is that paypal is not dumping the csv correctly.
The problem seems to stem from buyers who put carriage returns in their "Note" field, and thus cause the data field to extend across multiple lines. MS Excel appears to be smart enough to handle those carriage returns, but ms works does not - and so you get garbled results when you view it in MS Works.
I am sure paypal never tried this on anything except ms excel. I don't know if the "CSV" is a well defined file format, so I don't know if carriage returns are allowable. It seems to me that they should NOT be allowable and paypal should strip them out where encountered.
Any opinions, Damon?
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paintpower
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posted on September 29, 2001 05:02:14 AM new
Still haven't figured out how to make this downloaded data work in Works. I filed a PayPal support request DAYS ago and have heard NOTHING from them. I thought that Premier and Business account holders got better customer support than that!
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Retired2late
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posted on September 29, 2001 07:28:58 AM new
This could have something to do with it. From an article in the New York Times on PayPal's pending IPO:
"PayPal typically charges transaction fees ranging from 2.2 percent to 2.9 percent of the sale, plus 30 cents. That hasn't been enough to make PayPal profitable. The company has lost $231 million since its inception and management warned in the prospectus that the red ink is expected to continue at least through the rest of this year."
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paintpower
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posted on October 2, 2001 08:37:58 AM new
Just got a reply to the email I sent to PayPal. However I have NO IDEA what they are talking about!
Thank you for contacting PayPal. We apologize for the delay in responding
to your service request.
You have to format the first column as a comma delimited file. This will
separate the fields into several different columns.
Any spreadsheet whiz out there know how to do this in Works?
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paintpower
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posted on October 3, 2001 03:42:35 PM new
I gave up on this. Could not get it to work. Bummer!
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wbbell
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posted on October 3, 2001 10:38:52 PM new
I believe the answer they gave you applies only to ms excel.
I tried to make it work in MS Works, but I think the bottom line is the paypal CSV just doesn't play well with MS Works.
If you have the interest and the motivation, you could try to pursue this with paypal. I really do not think they are exporting a valid "CSV" formatted file. The problem will obviously be convincing them that they have a genuine problem rather than a "user error"
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paintpower
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posted on October 4, 2001 05:18:08 AM new
I may pursue it with PayPal just to rattle their cages. I wonder if they ever even tested their download with MS Works?
I did figure out a way to get the information I needed by going to my history, pulling up history for a month, highlighting all the information I needed to know, going to Print and then print selection. It prints out a really nice report with all the info I need to know. That will work unless my PayPal receipts become pages and pages long.
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ebud
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posted on October 5, 2001 03:51:32 PM new
"Good suggestion for Auctiva but those boys are running around over there in a big mess right now."
We're not that busy. We're working on adding it to the Manaager Pro beta version. The engineer told me that the data with the auction # doesn't appear in the downloaded file though so it's delayed us adding the feature.  But it is something we'll be doing. Just not as soon as we'd have liked.
I think we're currently over the big glut of eBay changes from a few weeks ago so now we've got time again to work on other things.
Support
Tom T.
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ebud
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posted on October 5, 2001 04:02:44 PM new
Is there a way to download more complete data? When I just tried it I didn't get the item# field or any of the several other fields that you'd get if you were to click on the "completed" link in the log for instance.
I can see why it would be hard for the programmers. Without it being in the log file already they'd have to open each of the completed links one by one and try and read it off the page itself. That's a lot of work and leaves things open to errors if PayPal were to change their layout.
I just thought perhaps I was missing somethning or there was another page were I could donwload more data.
Surely PayPal must have some sort of developer API so I believe we should contact them on that as well.
Support
Tom T.
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paypaldamon
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posted on October 5, 2001 04:51:05 PM new
Hi,
Can I have a bulleted format of what is causing the problems for you? I would also appreciate any suggestions bulleted, as I can direct this to the Product team (I understand part of the problem, but I need to be able to convey it in a short manner).
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wbbell
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posted on October 5, 2001 09:00:43 PM new
* Paypal dump data feature, comma separated file (CSV)
* "Note" field can contain carriage returns - these are not removed in the CSV, and thus one record can span many lines in the CSV file
* MS EXCEL appears to be smart enough to figure it out and file appears correctly
* MS WORKS does NOT appear to be smart enough and file appears garbled/useless.
Suggested solution: Paypal DELETE carriage return characters in the "note" field when dumping to a CSV file.
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alanuk
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posted on October 8, 2001 12:05:35 PM new
paintpower, email me at [email protected] thanks.
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