AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Hoping for some help with this one guys:

When I define variants for some of my products, I often use a "|" sign for my attributes. For example:

Men's Rain Coat
Options:
Small | Black
Medium | Black
Large | Black

I do this so that I can avoid having the customer needing to choose both size and color options. Now, when I try to edit those variants, I get tons of errors because dataport uses the "|" sign as a delimiter.

My question is,

Is there some formatting I can do in my csv for the particular column (I believe its called ProductOptions) that contains these vertical pipe signs so that I avoid these errors? Or do I basically need to re-do how I am displaying these options. Hope I explained this correctly.

I think there is an option in DataPort where you can configure the delimiter that DataPort will use. Try changing the delimiter in DataPort configuration options.

Is there some formatting I can do in my csv for the particular column (I believe its called ProductOptions) that contains these vertical pipe signs so that I avoid these errors? Or do I basically need to re-do how I am displaying these options. Hope I explained this correctly.

Yes, you have explained the problem very well, but I am afraid that there is no work around possible for your mentioned case. I think you have to re-do your options. DataPort uses pipe sign as an option delimiter "|" while exporting product options CSV, and there is currently no way to change this behavior.