Good day my fellow GCUnions!  Hope you're all thawing out from this cold winter!
 
I was noticing on one of the threads the question came up of how many cards of one design and through the discussion reminded me that I've meant to ask different artists and possibly get some ideas of what they do to save time in the 'create a card' process.
  
The question; when creating similar cards of the same image and wishing to save the same keywords, artist notes and inside text, in order to save time, what are some of the tricks you use?
 
I was uploading all my similar designs at the same time as the keywords other than one or two that dealt with the different categories, artist notes and parts of the inner verse would all be about the same and since those are all saved from the last card you created, you'd save time having to retype all that again.  But unfortunately, that means you must upload or submit all the similar cards together, which I prefer not to do as I like to break up having page after page of one design, plus sometimes I just get bored working with the same design for hours at a time.
  
Do some of you use the clipboard or save your texts and keyword groupings to a word program?  I know you can open separate browsers and copy and paste text from other cards, but that is even time consuming.
So anyone have special tricks they use or is this the way it is and always will be?  lol
 
Looking forward to some of your smarter ideas!

At GCU, you need to be really careful pasting from a word processing document into some of the fields...Keywords is one of them.  You will create coding errors.
 
These are my two ways around it:
 
1) Copy and paste into NOTEPAD, it is an UN-FORMATTED text doc, so you can copy and paste from there into any field on GCU without any coding issues.
 
2) You can also keep a separate window open and copy from your Manage Cards page to the new fields.
 
That's what I've learned anyway  

Hello, so last night I was thinking the same thing about saving time with keywords and Artist's notes while submitting a few new cards.  I am not sure if what I did was the most efficient, but I did feel like it saved me time.  
 
I had a Manage Cards window open and would copy the Keywords or Artist's Note from one card by highlighting and ctrl -C the specific text (you do not need to "edit" the card to capture the info). Then I selected the card to create or edit and pasted the text into the appropriate section of the card I wanted to update. I found it saved me quite a bit of time using copy and paste, especially since several of my photos have been taken in similar locations and I wanted to include that information in the Artist's Notes section.  

Quote from Websprinter_148078 on Mar 16^th, 2011, 2:05am:

 
Again...just pay close attention to bad coding that ends up in the fields at GCU when copying text from these types of programs.  Word is NOTORIOUS for this issue.  Sometimes that bad coding does not show up until after you've created the card and closed the fields.
 
On Zazzle,this is not an issue.  You can copy from a Word Doc and paste into the Description and Keyword fields when creating a product without bad coding errors.  Not at GCU however.

Quote from Randall_140313 on Mar 16^th, 2011, 9:36am:

 
When I first started at GCU I kept a meticulous spreadsheet with the verse, categories, keywords and so on. I gave that up after a year.  As it turned out, it really isn't that helpful because every card in it's own way is unique.
 
Now what I do is find a card of mine Searching Manage Cards that has the basic 'frame-work' for my new card.  Put the keywords into a WORD DOC so that spell check is there as well as an easier-to-read format.  Change/add my new card's keywords, then copy that into Notepad and copy from Notepad to GCU.
 
The reason I do this is though Notepad is great because it gives you un-formatted text, it is not a visual pleasure to work in     So, I just wanted to be clear that I don't save info in Notepad, I use it as a 'Rinse Cycle' so to speak to clear text from formatting before pasting into GCU.
 
Does that make sense?  

"GCUnions"
 
giggle!  

I have a spreadsheet where I store keywords. They are organized alphabetically by subject. One column is headed subject, the next keywords, then title,the next description, and finally any comments and reminders I may need. I also have a sheet for generic descriptions such as 'anniversary card' and my store details; etc. This is useful for the Z site also.
I can easily add new lines at the bottom, select all, and sort alphabetically.
In the same workbook I have another sheet for verses, organized by birthday, anniversary etc.
Another sheet has a list of years (ages etc) and associated words. They are all held neatly in one workbook.
It is very easy to copy and paste all that I need in seconds.
I do a lot of stock photography, and started organizing keywords for that.
To find keywords in Excel, hit control f: it save a lot of scrolling when your sheets get to be 5000+ lines long!
Excel is basically a database, and much more flexible than Word or Notepad for this job. You could also use Works for Windows, or the free program OpenOffice.

Hi all,
 
I do the "notepad" thing. One of the things that I do is leave a "blank" at the top of the notepad. For example you could do:
 
Title:
Category:
Holiday/Occasion:
Front Text:
Inside Text:
Keywords:
Font:
Permissions/Recognition:
 
I leave that as a blank and when I create a new card, I just copy/paste to the bottom. It saves me time and prevents me from forgetting to jot down important info (i.e. fonts - what a pain it is to find it again).  
 
Hope this helps,  
 
Jannina
 
P.S. You can use the ctrl-F (find) option in notepad