thread Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store in Orders, Menu Items, Catalog & Fulfilment

Syncing item descriptions with online store

tberry668 — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 12:58:37 GMT

I am setting up an online store with items synced to my brick and mortar store inventory. I created detailed item descriptions for hundreds of items, and now realize I have a big problem. When I created the item descriptions, I used a lot of lists, like...

Handcrafted wood

Item dimensions 7"x9"

3+ Ages

2 AA batteries not included

But when the items sync to the online store, the description there does not recognize the returns. It just shows up as 1 line like...

Handcrafted wood Item dimensions 7"x9" 3+ Ages 2 AA batteries not included

which in most cases looks terrible and is confusing. I don't see any options in sync settings to fix this. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

JustinC — Fri, 15 May 2020 19:16:55 GMT

Hey @tberry668

When Square Sync is enabled, item descriptions in Online Store cannot be edited without the changes reflecting in Square Dashboard.

You'll need to turn the sync off description sync in Settings > Square Sync > Settings on your Online Store Dashboard so edits won't affect the POS side of your account.

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

tberry668 — Sat, 16 May 2020 00:55:51 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping there would be a way to get it to just recognize the returns rather that fixing hundreds of items, but i guess not. I assume if I ever turn description sync on again, it would break all of the fixed formatting, so I can't set up the item and description at the same time. I will have to do the online descriptions separately from now on. Thanks again for taking the time to reply, even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear. 🙂

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

JustinC — Sat, 16 May 2020 18:14:16 GMT

Sorry my response wasn't what you were looking for 😔. Making sure your thoughts are heard by the Product Team so they get insight on the ways our Sellers want to use the Online Store. Hopefully we have some good news to share for improvements.

Thanks for posting! @tberry668

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

FOSC — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 19:48:59 GMT

I also had this problem. I turned off sync and formatted my descriptions. What would happen if I turned sync back on? Would my descriptions online then lose their formatting?

I ask because I'd like to export my item library along with all the descriptions.

Thanks.

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

here_apopupshop — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 15:23:16 GMT

Hi Justin,

I'm also finding the item description sync to be an issue.

While I was uploading tons of items to the store during our initial set up I kept the sync turned on to get all the descriptions over to the Online side. Now that I have turned the sync off to format them I am bummed I won't be able to import descriptions to the online side when I do imports for each season's new inventory.

We work with a lot of product at once so it would be ideal to make this change -- instead of having the system save the item description to the POS side on import, I'd like it to save it to the Online Store side instead. That is the place where those descriptions need to be for publishing online whereas the descriptions are not as necessary in our POS for in-store checkout as we have SKUs to identify products. If we can't have the description in both, can we choose which place it imports to?

Does that make sense?

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

JustinC — Sat, 12 Sep 2020 22:03:57 GMT

Yes, that definitely makes sense. I agree, it's beneficial to be able to choose between which platforms to import item descriptions to.

For now, with Sync disabled, you'll need to create those items from the Online Store site editor side when the new season approaches so you can freely edit the descriptions without it reflecting on the POS side.

@here_apopupshop

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

here_apopupshop — Sat, 12 Sep 2020 22:32:32 GMT

Right, but I need to be able to import the items to this side, not just create new products one-by-one.

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

Femme_Mecanique — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 20:08:56 GMT

i also need to do this exact thing and i'm afraid all my item descriptions will disappear!

Re: Syncing item descriptions with online store

LH1020 — Sun, 24 Jul 2022 21:01:05 GMT

did y'all ever get a response to this last inquiry? I'm having major issues with this same problem and can not seem to find any good answers.