I have Inventory on XLS sheets from my distributors, do I have to cut there information from their sheet to eccomerce upload sheet, I am totally new with the Dataport and have tried to use it but have not figured it out totally, but I will are there other ways to feed information in and select which products I want and are there any businesses helping with this issue.

The simplest way (other than plinking each item individually in the interface) is dataport...it's the only way to upload in bulk--and once you get the hang of it, it's simple. You have to be sure of what you are doing though, so as to not "overwrite" or delete products.
Good luck with it.
I believe that you can just make sure that your columns have the same names as the dataport sheets (thus matching the database) and upload them.
Sorry I cant be more detailed. I do use dataport, but I dont upload tons at a time from spreadsheets.

I have sucessfully taken an existing spreadsheet and renamed the columns titles added what I needed for the product and uploaded. Although I have found that it is faster if I have added at least on item to the category that I am working in, downloaded that one product into DataPort and copied and paste from another spreadsheet. I am pretty handy in excel so for me it goes pretty fast. You really need to practice with DataPort to get used to it. I have been using DataPort for about 1 1/2 years and find it to be an invaluable tool - and I have very little problems with it (and yes I have made my mistakes with it).

Best thing I can tell is start of slow, double and triple check your data entry and make sure you category names are correct with no extra spaces in the names (unless you want the that way). Take small steps then you will have more confidence to add 100's of products at the same time.

Good luck!

If you use dataport, how do you get your listings formatted w/ links etc. in the description?

I do not recommend HTML in the short description. If you want to use Links in the detailed descrription you need to write the description in HTML code and then make sure the HTML column is checked. I believe the correct way to set a check mark to be "on" is -1.

Be very careful as stated above go slow and do a test run!