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hamargyuri
Community Member

accidental click made me have to rewrite a proposal

I mean seriously?

Please, Upwork, if you think a modal, that disappears if you click away without the option of directly reopening it, is the best solution for freelancers writing their proposals on, then at least make it store any text written on it!
This is such a fundamental part UI design, I can't imagine how your frontend team could miss it.
Please fix it, because currently only some of the fields seem to store data, which basically equals to nothing.
Best would be if that modal wouldn't just disappear altogether, but minimize to a temporary button, or something...

 

On a sidenote, who had the great idea to put "my profile", "stats" and "tests" under the "find work" tab? And why did anyone listen to them?

40 REPLIES 40
astepanov83
Community Member

Hi,

 

sorry to hear you lost a proposal. I was in a similar situation and wrote a message here suggesting to add a draft functionality similar to gmail and other good mail services. But unfortunately my message was deleted.

That doesn't sound very promising 😕

vibhor_goyal
Community Member

This happens with me all the time.

I rewrote a proposal five times this morning for this very reason. I was able to paste the bulk of the document into a text file for re-use (glad I did) but I had to re-enter the milestones every time. Infuriating.

tlsanders
Community Member

You don't even necessarily have to click the wrong thing. Sometimes, you get an error message when you submit and then have to start over. You shouldn't have to draft your proposals outside Upwork to avoid typing them multiple times, but for your own sake you may want to start doing that.

msublette
Community Member

OMG! Yes!  I noticed this last week when I tried to write a proposal for a fixed-rate job.  I wrote up my proposal and then went to enter the amount for the first milestone.  I either hit enter or clicked just outside the box and the entire proposal closed.  This happened TWICE before I was smart enough to re-write the proposal in Word and then copy/paste into the proposal box.  This is terrible usability. 

I'm glad I'm not the only one... but of course I wish others didn't have the same frustrating experience. May I ask what browser/platform you're using?  I'm on a Mac using High Sierra and though I'm not sure, I think this issue may be even worse using Firefox vs. Chrome.

Mac - Mojave - Firefox

Gotcha. I just had a re-do of this very issue a minute ago, so I'm going to use Chrome for a while to see if it makes a difference.

kat303
Community Member

Ever think of using Microsoft Word (or another word processing program)???? Write it in Word and then just copy and paste it in your cover letter of your proposal. 

Wow, four question marks.

 

If you can make the Word solution work for entering of milestone descriptions, dates and prices, I'll be over the moon!  Until then...

msublette
Community Member

This is really just poor/lazy/sloppy design. You should not have to write your proposal in Word for fear of losing your work because you click somewhere on the screen.

Update - Chrome seems to reduce the risk of losing everything with an errant click, but doesn't fix the problem entirely.

andrews_jay
Community Member

I don't know how many times now, but this keeps happening to me.  Please correct this in your program, it is such a boobie trap.

 

Whenever I get an invitation to apply and am filling out the response form, I will be filling out all of the fields, write my proposal, answering questions, if I inadvertantly click on a blank portion of the page (I do this all the time instinctively to be sure that the correct window is in fact on top), the browser backs out of the page losing everyting that I have just done!

 

I just happened to me for about the 20th time and it is quite disruptive and counter-productive, as I have to start all over.  And in this case, now I have an appointment for a call with a client, and so my proposal will not be submitted for now as I just wasted the time I had available because the extremely skittish webpage interface disappeared because I clicked on a blank spot on the page AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

 

Please, I'm begging you, please correct this horror of a "feature"!  🙂

Jay, if you don’t want this to happen for the 21st time, get in the habit of first writing long proposals in a text editor, then copy/pasting it into the proposal form. If you use a Mac, then TextEdit will suffice. If not, I’m sure there are suitable Windows apps.
__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

Thank you John, for the reply.  I do in fact do as you are saying, but often there are also client questions to also answer in separate windows.  So even though I do edit my proposals in word then paste into the form, that doesn't change the fact that due to this "feature" I have to start the form all over again, from entering my rate, milestones, and paste each section over again.  

 

Yes I can mitigate the problem to a point, but it is still a real problem that over and over has cost me real time, even if I'm mitigating it, if I fall for the trap again I do have to fill everything out again, all because I clicked on a blank spot on the page.  The problem is not how I fill it out, the problem is that the page vaporizes upon a simple trigger which should not be causing such vaporization of work.

 

Jay

Thank you Michelle,

 

That is a good link about proposals in general doing similar.  I think it is even worse on the invitation reply page.

 

Jay

Jay, I agree with you that this isn’t good UI design, but this has been pointed out many times in this forum and nothing’s been done about it to date. As a matter of fact, many site improvements have been proposed here over the years to little or no effect. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t voice your criticism but don’t hold your breath waiting for something to happen. I think I post an answer similar to this about once a year.
__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

Agreed, though I have seen some issues get resolved based on reporting here, so it's worth a try.

 

Just throwing out ideas for a simple solution and not entire redesign of the page, just a simple "Are you sure you want to scrap all of your work?" confirmation dialog box would be nice.

I am very disappointed that that has not been fixed yet or even properly aknowledged.

 

This problem, specifically only on the reply to invitation page, and nowhere else do I see it happening, but it is very consistent on the reply to invitation page.

 

I just spent about 20 minutes carefully crafting my words to a potential client only for the text to all disappear in an instant, ironically all I did was highlight the text to copy it, and the page disappeared.  

 

Fix this legitimate problem please!  This has been a problem for a long time, I mentioned it over a month ago and got no official response that it would be or is being looked into, instead freelancer time is just being wasted.

 

So the result in this case is instead of me giving advice to a potential real client, I will likely just decline blankly as I was originally going to do, which is why I was just typing in the page in question in the first place.

 

Ugh I'm so irate that Upwork has just ignored this and it continues to bite me.

UX 2019: "we serve you a modern and beautiful website, very 'ajaxy' and built with the latest JS technologies out there, but you can better stick to notepad for being productive".

Ok, so instead of a disappearing window they should have notepad automatically pop open for us.

 

Every web based email that I use automatically saves drafts as you type JIC, and even most of upwork's pages don't just disappear like this page does consistently, infuriatingly.

Jay and others,

 

I understand this is a frustrating issue and I have forwarded your comments to the team. Our engineers are aware of it and are working on resolving it.

I have also merged the threads about this topic so we could provide updates in the same place.

 

Thank you for your patience.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Thank you John, but I'm not asking for a site improvent, I'm asking for the repair of a long-standing time-wasting pitfall trap of a web page interface.

A funny thing just happened.  I'm in the process of accepting an offer and starting work on it.  I click on the button "Accept Offer" and the proper window pops up, reminding me of the invitation reply window, somewhat interesting I thought.  So I get a few words into my message and realize I need to look something up before typing the message, so I test the page for similarity to the other, click outside the dialog box and sure enough it exits the message window. 

 

That's NOT the funny part though.  When I re-click to get back into that message window, my three previously typed words were there already typed in the message field.  That IS interesting.

 

That would be a decent bandaid if at least it preserved your text in some cache like this similar page evidently is.

I wish I could give you some confidence that this issue will get fixed (or
that you'll receive much help from these forums... strange levels of snark
seem to emanate from the "gurus") but kudos for raising the concern as many
of us have.
imbalanced-mjr
Community Member

It is a horrible experience when I write a proposal for dozens of minutes and then accidentally click a few pixels to the left... and it's all gone... 
No history of typing... no proposal settings... nothing... Start from scratch... Ludacris!
I just leave it as an unanswered invitation.
**bleep** this!

God knows how many times I quit writing it for 2nd time.

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

If this keeps happening to you, why not write it out in a word processor and then copy-paste?

Thank you Matthew, I do prepare my proposals in an external text editor.  But not for every quick message everywhere.  So sometimes the quick message turns into a bit more.  I learned long ago not to trust browsers to not lose my messages, but this is far worse, this isn't the user accidently clicking the back arrrow or a link or refresh, this is just clicking anywhere on 90% of the screen acts as a delete without undo, evidently only on this one page.

 

Beyond that, if you are commuting around a curve, barely in time see a pothole and barely avoid it most days, then occasionally failing to avoid it, again ruining your wheel, tire, and alignment, that you shouldn't expect the town to eventually fix that pothole after multiple people are victims of it? 

 

Then of course some smartypants standing on the curb is saying "why didn't you just steer around it?".  Yes I know I should avoid all potholes and should compose every browser message ever in a separate program.  Here's to fixing the potholes.

Hi Stojan,

 

Thank you for your feedback, I will share this with the team.

In the mean time I can suggest to open a job/proposal in a new window, this way if you click on the left or right side the window will not be closed. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork

On the accept interview screen, when clicking on the gray sidebar on the right side it completely closes the proposal window and deletes all the content & milestones I had typed.

The area looks like it's a part of the screen and doesn't look like it would cause the screen to close. Please see attachment.

Please fix this as it is extremely frustrating and has caused me to have to re-write my proposal MANY times.

Thanks,
Melisa

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Melisa,

 

I've merged your post with this thread where the issue was brought up as we are collecting feedbacks and sharing those with the team.  

 

We'll keep this thread updated with any new information.

 

Thank you for your patience. 

 

 

~ Bojan
Upwork

Thanks.
Yes, that is the exact same issue.
It wouldn't be a problem if there is a prompt about leaving page or losing
data.

Please, please, PLEASE!!! Fix this problem.  I don't fill out proposals often and today I had one that had multiple questions.  After the filling out the proposal, I tried to edit the bid price.  And lost everything.  Is it my responsibility as a user to remember that this is an issue?  NO!!!  This is such a terrible user experience for freelancers.  I did this twice on the same proposal.  So now I'm back to filling it out a third time.  This time I will write everything in another document, but I shouldn't have to.  What a waste of time this morning!

 

 

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi All, 

 

A fix for this issue has been released. I was just testing it and the text in cover letter box is saved when clicking outside of the Accept Interview sliding window. It will appear again when you click Accept Interview button. 

Could you please let me know if any of you still run into similar issues when accepting invitation?

~ Valeria
Upwork
mohsinali2020
Community Member

why there is no draft?

this is 2022, and this thing happened to me just now.

wonderful 😫

790ae62b
Community Member

I SECOND THIS! I just spent 15 minutes writing out a whole message, accidently clicked outside of it, and now it's gone. It's absolutely bonkers that Upwork doesn't fix such a **Edited for Community Guidelines** and obvious flaw. 

ilearnforyou
Community Member

How is this still a problem nearly a decade later? I just worked for 30 minutes on a client invite and lost it all when I clicked outside after uploading documents. This user experience disincentivizes meaningful responses to clients. Now I just want to rush through and write down anything. I'm so sad 😭😭😭

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