If you sell on eBay, you may have noticed a very annoying eBay / Chrome bug that started to appear in the past few months when trying to print an invoice or packing slip. This is due to a spacer image that eBay uses that is not supposed to be visible in browsers but it is for some reason in Chrome.
If you contact eBay seller support about this issue, they will almost certainly recommend that you switch to a different browser (hardly a perfect solution, since other browsers have different problems with eBay).
After digging into a code a bit, I found the culprit image and wrote a bookmarklet that lets you, with a single click, get rid of the dreaded gray vertical line, so that you can print the packing slip / invoice the way you intended.
To use the bookmarklet, simply drag and drop the blue button below to your Chrome bookmark bar, go to the eBay invoice preview you are about to print (the one with a line), and click on the bookmarklet. The line should disappear allowing you to print clean looking eBay invoices.
EDIT: It seems that eBay has added an Onload Print function. Before you are able to click the bookmarklet, dismiss the print window, either with Cancel button or by hitting Esc on your keyboard. When you are back to the invoice page, click the bookmarklet in the bookmarks bar to apply the fix, and Ctrl+P or Menu > Print to print the invoices.
Drag and drop this into your Chrome bookmark bar:
{ebayBrokenImage=encodeURI('%7Dspacer.gif');ebayBrokenImage2=encodeURI('%7B$URL.Spacer%7D');for(var i=0,a=document.getElementsByTagName('img'),l=a.length;i<l;i++){if(a[i].src.indexOf(ebayBrokenImage)>-1){a[i].style.visibility='hidden';}else if(a[i].src.indexOf(ebayBrokenImage2)>-1){a[i].style.visibility='hidden';}}})();
){kind=small}
Feel free to post suggestions or comments if this is not working or stops working for you (if eBay updates) and I will try to revise the code.
EDIT (May 5th 2016): Thanks to many of my readers who commented with instances where this bookmarklet did not work. Latest change now includes a fix to remove line on “Address labels and invoice/packing slip” page as well. Please delete your old bookmarklet and use the updated one above (blue button).
using windows 10 does not work, sorry!
Hi David,
Thanks for letting me know. It is likely not related to Windows version but rather is the issue with the UK site (see my reply to Mo below).
I think I fixed it now, thanks to you guys feedback, so please delete the old bookmarklet from your Chrome and re-add it by dragging the same icon in the article to your bookmarks bar. Please give it a try and reply with the result! Thank you!
Hi
I have tried it on my uk ebay site as instructed above and the link doesn’t do anything once pressed. The gry line is still there.
I see. I’m sorry, I did not anticipate the possible discrepancies for ebay.co.uk site, as I had no access to eBay UK selling manager. I have updated the script to try to make it universal and independent of country specific site.
Please delete the old bookmarklet from your Chrome and re-add it by dragging the same icon in the article to your bookmarks bar. Please give it a try and reply with the result! Thank you!
Excellent workaround David!
Thank you for helping sort this out for us all. This has been an issue for months but finally thanks to you we have a workable solution. We really appreciate your efforts!!
Mo
You are welcome! It’s no fun to switch browsers in the midst of workflow.
Many thanks for this. I am on ebay UK and Windows 10. This fix has worked for me straight away. Thank you so much for the bookmarklet
Saviour
You are welcome, Saviour. Glad it helped.
I just tried this on my Chrome Browser (Windows 7) and on eBay UK and it worked a charm. So clever of you. Thanks! J x
Hi,
Your fix works on all print options on Ebay Uk except the ‘Address labels and invoice/packing slip’ which we use all the time! Any ideas? The grey line is really driving me nuts!
Sue,
Thanks for pointing this out. I have applied a change that should now work for “Address labels and invoice/packing slip” page as well!
Hope this eliminates this particular frustration with eBay selling for you. Enjoy!
Thank you!!!!
You’re an angel!
Sue
Glad it helped 🙂
Thanks a lot, it works well in Windows 7 and windows server 2003, Chrome Ver 50.0.2661.94.
You are welcome, enjoy!
Thank you. Worked great for me!
Awesome!
Thanks so much, your workaround works great! (Once I realised I had to first cancel out of the print dialog window to access the “Fix Ebay Invoice” Bookmark 🙂
You are welcome, Pete. It seems that eBay has added OnLoad print function since I wrote this article. I edited the blog entry to reflect that. Thanks for the tip!
Just as a note, for Chrome in Win7 on ebay UK, the line problem seems to have gone. It plagued me for ages (not knowing of your fix before now) and so I would print in Firefox only.
Tried a couple of weeks ago in Chrome and all is good now it seems (only tested for “Address labels and invoice/packing slip”)
Yes, the eBay devs have addressed the problem a little while ago. Since this was an old blog post I have not updated it, figuring most people will notice the line is no longer there and stop using the bookmarklet. Thanks for the note..
It is extraordinary how long it takes ebay to take note of issues and then again fix the actual problem. I wish I’d found your solution a while back when I previously searched for a fix. It would have saved a lot of time and hassle as my Firefox install runs so slowly these days it was getting painful every time I needed to print ebay stuff.
I hear you. The same frustration was the motivation for me to write the bookmarklet. I actually have whole host of bookmarklets (about 7-8), that I use to quickly do repetitive tasks for me on eBay and other ecommerce site I have. Saves TONS of time prefilling forms for me to streamline the workflow.