Weird characters upon importing item long descriptions into NCR Counterpoint

Article Number: 25 | Rating: Unrated | Last Updated: Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 12:15 PM

Purpose:

This article suggests reasons why strange characters appear in the HTML long description for an item, after bulk updating the HTML description with DB Import and how to correct them.

Solution:

There are several special characters that may appear in your item long descriptions that could cause this behavior. For example:

Smart quotes (double or single)
Symbols or characters like ®, ™, ½

Smart quotes
If you used Microsoft Word to prepare your long descriptions, you might have "smart quotes" turned on (the curly, typographer's quotes that "curl in ” towards the quoted words). Smart quotes imported into long descriptions will cause strange characters.

To turn off smart quotes in MS Word:

Go to Tools menu and select AutoCorrect Options...
Click the AutoFormat tab.
Deselect the checkbox next to Replace "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes.”
Run a Find/Replace operation (press CTRL-H) and Replace " with " (this will replace existing smart quotes with straight quotes).

Other special characters
To replace various special characters with safer HTML:

Turn off smart quotes as described above
Run several Find/Replace operations (press CTRL-H) as follows:
1. Replace ^t with ,
  (Replaces tabs with commas)
2. Replace " with "
  (Kills curly quotes)
3. Replace ' with '
  (Kills curly apostrophes)
4. Replace ® with & reg; —enter with no space
  (Converts registered symbol to HTML symbol to HTML)
5. Replace ™ with & trade; —enter with no space
  (Converts trademark symbol to HTML)
Save as a plain text file
In CounterPoint, go to System / Utilities / DB Import.
Under Tables select EC_ITEM_DESCR
To update Item Long Descriptions only check Update . To replace all HTML long descriptions, select Add New .
Choose Verify to ensure all data will be imported.
Choose Import to to finish importing your HTML long descriptions.
Do a publish to NRO to ensure your changes are reflected on your website. The next time the integration agent runs, it will pull the file into NRO automatically.

Moving from Excel to Word
If your long descriptions are in an Excel spreadsheet, here are instructions to move them to MS Word and perform the necessary corrections: