BroadPaper Cloud
Help and support
Most questions about BroadPaper Cloud are answered in a paragraph somewhere below. If yours is not, a person will answer it by email.
Common problems
- “We couldn't read this file.”
- £ signs or accented names look wrong
- My columns are called Column 1, Column 2
- Dates are the wrong way round
- Not all my rows came in
- The file is too big
- Google Drive or OneDrive will not open my file
- Getting next month's figures from Google Drive or OneDrive
- Fixing one wrong figure without a new spreadsheet
- Everyone's lines are on one invoice
- A document has the wrong figure in it
- Adding VAT or a discount to a total
- Someone cannot open a link I sent
- I have used this month's documents
- Getting a design back to how it was
- Making a design from a Word document or a PDF
- Things moved when I deleted a folder
- Inviting a colleague
- I was invited, but I am asked to name a business
- Deleting my account
By topic
Importing data
Spreadsheets, CSV files, JSON and pasted rows, files from Google Drive and OneDrive and refreshing them, typing data in and editing it: what is read, how column types are decided, and every import message explained.
Designs
Starting a design, using the designer, importing a Word document or a PDF, your letterhead, what fills each field, working figures out, thumbnails, and the history that lets you go back.
Documents and sharing
Making documents, the monthly count, and share links with an expiry, a password and a record of who opened them.
Plan, billing and account
The two plans, inviting colleagues and joining a workspace, paying, cancelling, what happens to your data, and deleting your account.
Folders and search
Down the left of the application is your whole workspace: Your data, Designs and Documents, each a list you can file into folders, with Your brand, People and Plan and billing beneath them. The number beside each heading and each folder counts everything inside it, including what is in the folders within it.
- Folders belong to one section. A folder called
Aldermead
under Your data is a different folder from one under Designs, so a client's data and their designs can be filed separately. The menus only offer folders from the same section. - Making one. Open the menu beside a section's heading and choose New folder, or New folder inside from a folder's own menu. Folders can go six levels deep, and two folders side by side cannot have the same name.
- Filing something. Open the menu beside it and choose Move to a folder, or Move to the top. A folder moves with everything in it, from Move into a folder in its own menu, but never into one of its own folders.
- Renaming. Rename is in the same menu, for a folder or for anything in one. Renaming a set of data or a design does not change what uses it.
- Looking inside. The arrow beside a folder opens and closes it in the list; its name shows what is in it on the page beside the list, one folder at a time. Which folders you left open is remembered in that browser.
Deleting a folder
Deleting a folder never deletes what is in it. Everything inside — the things filed there and the folders within it — moves up a level, into whichever folder held the one you deleted, or to the top. The message afterwards says how many things moved. To delete what was in it as well, delete those things themselves.
Searching
The Search box above the list looks through the names of your data, designs and documents as you type. Folders stay in the list while you search, and the number beside each one becomes how many matches are inside it — however deep — so what you are looking for is found where it is filed: open a folder with a number beside it to see them. Folder names themselves are not searched. The menu beside the box sorts what is filed in each list By name or Most recent first; folders themselves always stay in order by name.
“You're doing that faster than BroadPaper allows.”
You're doing that faster than BroadPaper allows.
Wait [a number of seconds, or of minutes for a longer wait] and try again — nothing has been lost.
BroadPaper limits how quickly some things can be done, so that one runaway browser tab or script cannot slow the service down for everybody else, and so that a share link's password cannot be guessed by trying thousands of them. The limits cover requests from one network address overall, bringing in or refreshing data, producing documents, saving designs, matching data to a design, going back to an earlier version, importing a document, creating share links, opening shared links, wrong passwords on a shared link, opening checkout or the billing page, managing People, inviting people, creating a workspace, and deleting an account.
They are set well above what a person working normally does, so seeing this message usually means something is repeating by itself — a double-clicked button, several tabs open on the same design, or a tool you have pointed at BroadPaper. The message says how long to wait, and nothing you had done is lost.
These are separate from your plan's limits — documents a month, sets of data, storage — which do not reset after a few seconds and are explained on Plan, billing and account.
Contacting us
Email is the quickest way to reach us, and every message is read and answered by someone who works on BroadPaper, usually within two business days. The address is at the foot of this page, with what to include so the first reply can be the answer.
Still stuck?
Email support@broadpaper.com and a person who works on BroadPaper will reply. It helps to include the exact message you saw, what kind of file you were using (a workbook, a CSV, a paste) and where it came from.
Please do not attach a spreadsheet of real client data. A copy with two or three made-up rows that still shows the problem is almost always enough, and it is better for everybody that we never hold the real one.