Copying items from a previous Auction

With the Auctions app, you can copy items from one of your existing auctions into the one you are building. Many organizations run the same auction every year with much of the same catalog — the same experiences, the same recurring donors — and copying brings those items across with their photos, which an import cannot do.

To copy items:

1. Open the Auctions Manager.
2. Click the title of the auction you want to copy items into.
3. Click the Items tab.
4. Click Copy From Auction.
5. For Copy items from, select the auction to copy from.
6. In Items available to copy, select the items you want.
7. Click Copy Items.

Note: The auction must be saved before you can copy into it. On a new auction, save it first.

Choosing items

The list shows each item's Number, Item, Category, Type, Price, Photos and Published state, so you can tell at a glance which are worth bringing across and which have images attached.

Select individually, or use the header checkbox to take everything. If the auction you picked has no items, the screen tells you so.

What comes across

Each copy is a new item in your auction, carrying the original's name, category, type, prices, descriptions and photo files.

Two things worth knowing:

• Copies keep the source item's published state. Copy a published item and it arrives published — visible immediately if the auction is open. Review what you have copied before opening bidding.
• Only photo files that still exist are copied. If an image was removed from the server after the original item was created, the copy simply arrives without it rather than with a broken image.

Nothing is copied back to the source auction, and the originals are untouched.

The results screen

After copying you get a summary — how many of the selected items were copied, and into which auction — with a row per item showing Copied or Failed and the reason for any failure.

An item can fail if it is incomplete in a way the new auction will not accept, most often a missing starting bid. Copy the rest, then create that item by hand.

From here you can click Done, or copy more items from another auction.

Copying or importing?

Use	When
Copy From Auction	The items already exist in one of your auctions, and you want their photos
Import	The items are in a spreadsheet, or you are updating many items at once

See Importing auction items from a CSV file.

Related articles:

• Importing auction items from a CSV file
• Exporting auction items to a CSV file
• Managing Auction Items