Help · Catalogue and CSV

Besides the plain CSV, a sale can come out in the format of the platform it will be sold on. Open the sale and choose Export for your platform, with photographs. There is a card for each of Auction Flex (desktop), Auction Flex 360, LiveAuctioneers, Wavebid, HiBid and a plain spreadsheet, and each card says in a sentence what that sale will trip over before you import it.

Download with photographs (ZIP) gives you four things in one file:

• The CSV, in the importer's own columns and order, with one row per lot.
• An images folder, every photograph named the way that platform matches it to a lot: 771-1.jpeg for Auction Flex, 771-1.jpg for LiveAuctioneers, Wavebid and Auction Flex 360, 771_1.jpg for HiBid. A sublot keeps its letter. A sale with more than 1,000 photographs is split into numbered folders, whole lots only.
• warnings.txt, a list in plain sentences of what to look at: titles that were shortened, lots with no consignor code, lots whose quantity is above one, photographs that are not really JPEGs.
• import-steps.txt, the platform's own import screens in order, ready to print.

Download the CSV only gives just the first of those.

Things worth knowing:

• Titles are shortened where the platform limits them: 49 characters for LiveAuctioneers and 50 for Auction Flex 360. Each shortened title is listed in warnings.txt with what it was, so you can put the full one back by hand.
• The reserve goes into the files that import one, for the house's own use. Do not post one of these files where a bidder can read it. The plain spreadsheet never carries a reserve.
• Auction Flex skips a lot whose consignor code it does not know, so give each consignor the code you use in Auction Flex on the Consignors screen before you export.
• Where a platform does not publish its format in full, the preflight page says so, and the sample sale's files are open to anyone to try.

Exports come with the plan: a house still on its free first 25 lots can print the catalogue and look at every preflight page, and takes the files once it is on the plan. A house whose plan has ended can still take them. See The plan.

The same files can be read back in, so a sale can go out and come back: see Bringing a catalogue in from a spreadsheet or another system. For each platform's columns and limits in full, see the pages for Auction Flex, LiveAuctioneers, Wavebid and HiBid.

Not what you needed? Write to support@lotdesk.app, with the details in what to tell us.