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businessdirect
Community Member

How to print an entire Upwork message thread

As a client, I find the messages exchanged between myself and a hired freelancer something that should be preserved offline, either on paper, or as a PDF. The sometimes months of messages that are exchanged can be useful months or years later, if those messages contain details about the operation of a program that is being developed, for example. Things that may have been forgotten during the development can be reviewed if the project's message thread between the client and freelancer can be saved/printed/exported to the client's hard drive.

 

Yet, despite what would seem to be an obvious need, I have failed to find any way to do just that. Simply using Firefox or Chrome's or IE's "Print" or "Save As" functions, you cannot get the ENTIRE message thread preserved offline.

 

Why is this? Does it make sense to have no option of being able to refer back to an old project's communication/message thread other than by being connected to Upwork's Inbox?

ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Hi Steve,

 

I understand the importance of having this function available in the user interface. Unfortunately, we don't have any new information about this at the moment. We'll definitely let the Community know if anything changes in this area. Meanwhile, our support team is able to assist with exporting all messages. A quick way to contact support is by clicking the "Get Support" button that shows at the bottom right corner of the Upwork Help page

 

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar
Upwork

View solution in original post

66 REPLIES 66
kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Philip,

 

Thank you for sharing your experience and suggestion with us. Although a feature to download the content of conversations from Upwork is not among our priorities, it is something we are considering implementing eventually.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Any updates to this thread?

Hi Saurabh,

 

Unfortunately, we don't have any additional information yet.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Spoiler
Any updates? It's now been 6 years since the first post requesting to be able to print an entire message thread. This is essential to me to be able to have a record of the corresponence between me and the programmers I've hired.

Hi Joel,

 

I understand the importance of having the option to print an entire message thread, however, we aren't aware of any plans to add this feature. I'll share your feedback with the team. If anything changes in this area, we'll make sure to inform the Community.

 

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar
Upwork

It seems that upwork like most platforms wants to control the conversation out of fear that the participants may someday abandon them. this would seem to be an example of selfish greed that we find in most platforms.  it is often referred to under euphemisms like 'engagement' or stickiness.  but the bottom line, it is beyond an inconvenience for the users. great platforms just do the right thing for the users, and in turn the users remain loyal because there is always added value to being there.  one person's opinion before I have to go and cut and paste into word like its the 1990's.  

If you're right about the goal, it's extremely counterproductive, since the most logical response to the extreme user-unfriendliness of the messaging system is to move communications off the platform as soon as a contract is in place. 

l_pouncey
Community Member

Philip,

 

You may want to try downloading the following extension from Chrome.  

I believe it may be helpful in your situation.

 

Adobe Acrobat Extension.png

Printing the web page to PDF does not solve the problem.  Your suggestion fails to realize that the message thread portion of one's INBOX is an inframe component arrangement with a scroll bar.  Print the web page only prints what is visible on the page when you start the print job.  Printing does not get you the entire message thread that may date back months.

Philip,

 

I am a troubleshooter and enjoy solving problems, whenever possible.

 

Realizing you would like to save your “Upwork Messages/Threads, between your Freelancers and Yourself/Company.

 

I, myself, like to keep records of my messages/threads between Client/Freelancer as well.

 

Just thought I could be of help by giving you a “temporary solution”, until Upwork implements downloading of such.

 

Ok, Nix the Extension. I do not believe that would be beneficial in this case; however…

 

In the attachment are more “temporary solutions”.

 

Hope this helps. Good Luck.

 

Thank you for your assistance.

You are very welcome. Happy to hear I could help.

Thank you so much, Philips, for the question. And thank you, Linda, for the solution file. Helps me a great deal. Really appreciate this conversation.

I use the MHT add-on in Firefox, and I just tested it with a 'Room' and it saved the entire page (including the contact list at left) with media into a single MHT file, which can be opened with other browsers.

0e6a5c04
Community Member

This Question IS NOT solved.

 

It is not about the technical aspect of how to save the chat.

 

It is about how to view an entire chat history with one click. Right now I have dozes of pages of history with some freelancers, and to view it I need to scroll and wait bit by bit which takes forever.

 

It's funny that Upwork is a place for programmers but they themselfes can't come up with a solution to this problem.

Dave G; The "solved" flag is something the OP can choose on the response that best answers their question.

 

Regarding your particular issue, this style of "lazy loading" is common with just about every message system I can think of - Skype being a good example. I tried scrolling straight up to the top of a couple of message threads and it loads at LEAST 6+ months for me first go, which is a lot of data.

 

I'd like to know your particular use case for needing to see the entire history?

mtngigi
Community Member

All messages are also sent to personal emails. Those emails can easily be saved into folders, or perhaps the pertinent info just copy/pasted into a text editing program and then saved appropriately.

 

I have folders and rules set up in my email program so that each client's message goes into their own  folder.

 

May not be the most elegant solution, but until one comes along, it's a start ... it works for me.

0e6a5c04
Community Member

Virigina - That is incorrect. Messages are sent to personal mail only if you miss them and didn't see them in real time. Which makes sense, as why would I want every line of chat to flood my email inbox, if I'm seeing it in real time.

Also, even if they were sent, it is still not solution as I would have to browse bits by bits of emails to aggregate the full chat history, which is again time consuming and inefficient.

 

Jennifer - The use of chat history was described by the OP:

 

The sometimes months of messages that are exchanged can be useful months or years later, if those messages contain details about the operation of a program that is being developed, for example.

 

The first difference between Skype and Upwork is that Skype is a freeware and on Upwork we spend big bucks, and use it solely for business purposes, so it should better serve our business purposes.

 

I also don't find it as a productive argument, as the comparison is not relevant. I might as well mention that many other online support chats do have an option to save the whole chat history with one click. We are speaking here about a feature that is explicitly requested from the Upwork team, by Upwork users.

Dave G, I was asking for your particular use case, but if it's the same as the OP's then that's fine. You can search your message history for specific things. I still don't really see why anyone would need to print and/or view an entire message thread in one go. If you're looking for documentation, I don't think you should be relying on your chat history for that, personally. Important documentation should surely be documented separately?

The reason someone would need to print the entire message thread is because, like me, they are mostly likely to have a detail-oriented personality with projects that contain many details.

 

The ability to revisit original conversations also helps as a reminder of goals. I wouldn't consider doing a project without saving every piece of communication.  Not having the feature available is prompting me to check out other freelance sites.

 

 

mtngigi
Community Member

As I said "or perhaps the pertinent info just copy/pasted into a text editing program and then saved appropriately". 

 

Most times I am not working in "real time", so I do get most messages in my email program. Any I miss, if they have important information I want to keep with my client records, I do as mentioned above.

Or, how about this everyone:

 

What if, like me, you were invited to apply for a job by an Upwork Talent specialist and the 'client' was fraudulent and posing as a legitimate agency and you now have to print the messages in order to take some follow up legal action regarding the exchange of sensitive information? A copy/paste or isolated shots of text isn't ideal.

 

I know, I know, it's all on me as the stupid freelancer for giving any of that info, however the Upwork agent indicated she 'encouraged' me to apply and silly me thought that meant some vetting was involved. There was an application requested and I filled out the information with the assumption that this was part of their corporate onboarding just as confidentiality agreements sometimes are.

 

At any rate, after zero help from Upwork I have to notify the appropriate legal agencies and cannot print out the messages. Fail.

 

This top rated freelancer is all done using this platform. The service just isn't there. 

 

My advice to all is to be very savvy about even the jobs that come suggested to you by agents of the platform. I'm sure you're all smart enough to know that already.

 

Hi Melissa,

 

I'm really sorry about your experience with this client. I see our team is already assisting you through your open support ticket and will follow up on your latest update soon.

 

To clarify, I see our agent indicated in their message that this is a new client they were helping with posting their first job, and encouraged you to review the job post and submit a proposal if you'd like to learn more about their job by communicating with the client directly. Unfortunately, I see the client shared their request in direct communication with you and action has recently been taken by our team against their account for violating Upwork ToS. 

 

Please note that we strongly advise users against sharing sensitive information on and off Upwork, and suggest you review these safety tips in order to avoid similar incidents going forward.

~ Vladimir
Upwork

Vladimir,

 

I wanted to echo the need for this feature...with multiple projects and a lot of technical data that is being exchanged in message threads, I absolutely need to save this information to ensure we don't lose a technical exchange that may be important later.  Having the ability to archive an entire message thread as a PDF or DOCX is really key.  Having to scroll up tediously and wait for older messages to load to store each page is ridiculous. 

 

Thank you.

An AutoIt script could possibly navigate the entire message thread and save the contents.

"Certa bonum certamen"

This is still causing problems for me. I'll often gather info on 10 or more different topics about a client and their company - and the projects - before I begin writing. 

 

Trying to scroll back for the small details is very time-consuming and leaves a high risk of error.

 

This is a problme for me today as my accountant is looking for backup documentation on a project to help justiify the costs paid to a upwork freelancer. So that when CRA (Canadian Goverment) audit us, we can prove that all $s paid was for services and notjust because.  Sure the invoice feature helps but there is virtually no details on the invioce, just the title of the project.

 

I find this hard to beleive that upwork has not created a method to print the entire tread to a PDF. This would solve the entire problem. Copying and pasting between PDF and word, just doesn't cut it.

carolyngomes
Retired Team Member
Retired Team Member

Hello Everyone,

 

I just wanted to let you know that earlier I responded to this thread with a solution to this issue. However, I later learned that this is an internal tool, but I have brought it to the attention of our Development team as a requested feature. As for now, the best workaround would be to right click on the page when you are viewing the message room, select "Print", and on most computers, there is an option to print to PDF. If this option is not available, there are free downloadable programs online that can perform this action.

 

I apologize for the confusion.

~Carolyn
Upwork

Hi Carolyn,

 

Have you tried that to print a messages? Seriously, it is a joke.  It will ONLY ever print the first message. It doesn't matter which message you select in the thread when printing.

 

See the attached PDF that I printed.

  • Notice that it is just the first message within the thread.
  • Notice that you only get part of the message.
  • Notice in the attached PDF that you get a blank page too.
  • Notice that the formating is well "bad" to be polite.

 **Edited for Community Guidelines**

 

The only way to do it is to copy/paste into Word and then print. It's clumsy, but it works.

Nichola L. stated:

 

The only way to do it is to copy/paste into Word and then print. It's clumsy, but it works.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

 

That's how I've always done it since I discovered early on that there was no user friendly way to accomplish it.  Yes, it is clumsy but does get the job done. 

 

Moderators:  Please share this dilemma with the "powers that be" so hopefully an actual, user-friendly way can be accomplished soon.  Thanks much!  Smiley Happy

 
0e6a5c04
Community Member

This thread was opened one year and a half ago.

 

Why can't Upwork create this feature? They began to charge higher commisions lately, but what about listening to the same clients that are paying these commissions?

 

I have a one year old huge project that I Chatted for months on Upwork with my developer, I dod't remember how some feature works, and to find out I will have to press and scroll about 500 times to see all message history.

 

extemely annoying and disapponiting.

Bumping this request. For all of the reasons mentioned above, this would be a valuable option.

What I did that sort of worked--a bit better than trying to highlight the entire chat:

  1. In Firefox, right-click within the messages list (anywhere on the page would probably work).
  2. Select "Save Page As."
  3. Give it a name and save it as a txt file.
  4. This file can then be opened in an editor and used as needed.

Several considerations:

  • This will probably only work if you've loaded the entire chat. I had lots of messages in the thread but they seemed to all save. This might have been because I scrolled to the beginning of the chat before saving--I don't know.
  • The entire page's text will be there, of course, so you'll want to trim the extraneous info.
  • Styling is gone.
a023dfe5
Community Member

Same problem for me. I need to justify the time of developments by give the conversion archive well formatted.

 

  1. Copy/Past in word give only the text. That's not an optimal solution.
  2. Print in PDF not working if I load all of the conversion
  3. ScreenShot extension give me white page.

 

prantu
Community Member

Hi everybody,

I just saw this thread today and out of curiosity, I am trying to build a Chrome extension to capture entire UW message thread (single room) Here is a screenshot of its functionality (I have just started, so it is in very early stage of development) You'll just have to load all messages and click a button, that's it.extension screenshot.jpg

Can I share this extension in the forum after I'm done with it? Can any moderation confirm me that it is not against UW ToS?
Thanks.

________________________

"I'm silently judging your font choice."

vlmo
Community Member

Here is how I solved this issue for me.

 

Open upwork messages page in firefox, opera, safari, or chrome

Open developer tools and navigate to the console.

Copy&paste code from this bin**Edited for Community Guidelines** into textarea and press enter.

The script above removes unwanted divs and prepare page for a pretty format before get printed.

The last step - save page as pdf)

prantu
Community Member

 
________________________

"I'm silently judging your font choice."

prantu
Community Member

Hi Vlad,
As far as I know, UW does not allow to share a javascript and inspire someone to inject code via console though it is an innocent script (Can any mod please confirm that?)

About your script-- It breaks the whole page after initiating the print sequence so it is not very user-friendly from my point of view. Also, some pages were missing in the print preview.

________________________

"I'm silently judging your font choice."

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