Option to Make a Copy of a Saved Design

[ColsCreations]

So many times I'll be working on something and want to try something different with it but don't want to lose how I already have it. So I resort to copying layers, hiding/unhiding, grouping/ungrouping, which gets really unwieldy & frustrating for many different reasons. Occasionally I've even manually copied a design to another of the same blank so I could keep working on it without losing how I had it at the "i think this is it" point. So I thought tonight it would be really great if we had an option on Saved Designs to "Create a Copy" so we can keep editing while having the "original" to go back to. This would also make it easy to compare the different versions side-by-side when trying to decide which one to publish.

[Baylee]

I can see how that would be helpful depending on how you manage your work flow. For me, I seldom look at saved designs at all unless I have a computer crash or something..lol.

I do go through the same thought process of trying to decide which version I like best but I usually just go ahead and publish two or three different options and just keep them all hidden until I choose one (or sometimes two if they both look good). That way I can use the first one to create the second one etc. and compare them side by side. As long as you don't make any of them public until you've made your final decision it works great and saves having to do all that copying layers etc.

[Mark]

Hey @ColsCreations,

If you add the product to your cart it will save as is in your saved designs. After you make more changes, add it to your cart again and it will save as a new version. I just tested this and I was able to create 4 different copies by repeating the same steps.

There may be a more straightforward way of doing this so I will flag it with the team.

Thanks!

[ColsCreations]

Oh, I'd never have thought to try putting a design in my cart to save it at that stage of creation. Thank you, going to run right over and try this!

[ColsCreations]

OK, Houston, we've had a problem here.
I have no way of knowing if it's related to trying this add-to-cart trick or not but feels like this is the right place to post it and if not, I'm sure one of you guys will move it out of Ideas and over to the Tech forum.

I don't want to post the Saved Design in question, so it's the black card with a tombstone image, first thing on my Saved Design page.

So - I had that product design, in that state of creation, as a Saved Design. I'll call that Copy A. After reading @Mark 's suggestion earlier today, I added Copy A to my cart. Then I went to my cart and clicked on the product, entering the design tool but making no changes, to verify that yep, the design is how I left it. Then I went to my Saved Designs page where I did indeed find I had two copies of it now. I selected the first one on the page with the most recent time-stamp to edit. I'll call this Copy B. I deleted the images from the inside of the card on Copy B. Then I went back to Saved Designs and verified that yes, I still have Copy A with the inner picture on the card and Copy B that's now blank inside. I used the pencil/edit icon to title Copy A as "Inner Picture" and gave it a description of "orig saved in cart". (It was the tedious sizing & placement of the left and right images spanning the inside of the card to make one whole image that I didn't want to lose if I changed my mind about leaving it blank inside instead.)

Then I went about editing/designing on Copy B. At some point I decided that since I had Copy A safely in Saved Designs I didn't need it in my cart still so I removed it from my cart. Then I went into Saved Designs and edited its description to "orig saved in cart, then deleted from cart". That Copy A is what is still in my Saved Designs now.

Then I went back to working on Copy B. I made the text on the front of the card templates, added a line of template text and a template image to the back, left the insides blank, and thought, yeah, this is where I want to publish it. So I did "post for sale", filled in all the meta-data (new product/design so this was manual, not copied from transferring a design) and clicked to Post It and got

I've never had an error trying to publish before. I thought maybe I missed a mandatory field, double-checked things, tried again - same error. I thought, no biggie, I'll just go to Saved Designs and start the publishing process again. But it wasn't in my Saved Designs. 😢 It wasn't in All Products as a published design either. I used my browser's (Firefox) back button to get back to the post-for-sale page so I at least have the tags & title etc I can copy from there, but the design itself is just plain gone. This was about six hours ago and the missing Copy B has not turned up in Saved Designs or as a published product. (And of course trying to Post It from that post-for-sale page I still have open  doesn't work, same red error.)

So that's what happened. I don't know if its because of the add-to-cart "work-around" I tried, or just a random glitch that happened to occur at same time.

[Pádraig]

Hi @ColsCreations,

I'm very sorry to hear that you experienced this issue. Thanks for highlighting it with us. We have encountered this issue before so we will take a closer look. Unfortunately we don't have a resolution at this time but we will investigate further.

Thank you for your patience!

Pádraig

[ColsCreations]

Oh ugh. Started from a new product blank this morning and re-created my card design. Labeled it in Saved Designs as "New from New Blank".  Just tried to publish it and same exact thing happened. Got the red error message and design went poof! - not in Saved Design anymore. Gott'a head to work, guess I will hold off trying to re-create and publish this new card until we figure out what the problem is.

[PetalsPalette]

Absolutely agree with you on the duplication option. It would be a huge time saver having it. Right now, I had to publish the design first, the go to the edit tool to create my variation of it. Rinse and repeat for each variation.

I have been wondering if I should try publishing as private copy then work on it for my variation copies? I think it could help. Maybe.

[ColsCreations]

UPDATE:

Yesterday (7/7) I again re-created from scratch the design that kept going poof! and this time it published without issue. I did it in one session though without ever going back to Saved Designs to continue it. Published it as Hidden, used that version to tweak things and publish some variants, and no issues. So I don't know if the problem I had trying to publish it on 6/21 & 6/22 stemmed from me trying the add-to-cart workaround with it or if it was some other fluke, but it did finally publish. Maybe some time later I'll try the add-to-cart trick again purely as a test.

[slicedbread]

Adding to the shopping cart to create a duplicate is pretty cheesy, and doesn't inspire any confidence. There absolutely should be a way to save a 'specific' design! I'm a newbie user to this platform and am truly astounded at how some basic functions don't seem to exist at all.

For one thing, as far as I can see there is no way to simply replace an image in a design with another image to create a new design. This would save a TON of work. Currently I have four images that are the same size. It would be nice to create design A, then simply replace the image in A to create design B and save it, and so on. That's how it is on other platforms. Here, when I replaced the image it trashed the old image without asking me if that's what I wanted to do. I have to start from scratch for every variant, which is a huge investment of time with 40+ products when really it *should* be a matter of creating 10+ products and duplicating them with different images each time.

If there's a way to accomplish the above that has been found, somebody please chime in. Maybe I missed it. But I find zazzle just...weird. For example, if I click the 'Sell' button in the left taskbar, the one thing that does NOT pop up is a product search. If I click on 'Sell' it's because I want to sell something! Instead I have to hunt for a product.

I do like the platform, but I think they need to test it; sit somebody down who's used similar platforms (cp, redb etc) next to somebody who's never used any of them before, and they'll find that these two hypothetical individuals ask the same questions.

[Badeesie]

@slicedbread 

Once you set the first design for sale, you can make copies and variations pretty easily. If you don't want to have any of them for sale until they are all ready, set the first one to hidden when you publish it. Then if you navigate to the product page and click on Edit Product, you can change the image without affecting the original.

If you want to do more than one copy of the original before setting the first for sale, navigate away from and back to the product page. At this point, if I have a saved design based on that same product, a popup comes up asking if I want to continue with my saved design. When I say no, I start over from the original product and both new designs are in my saved designs area. Just make sure 1) to set the product visibility to public when you are ready to sell and 2) not to delete the original product until you've set any copies you made from it for sale.

When I choose 'sell' from the left taskbar, 'Create a Product,' which links to the product search/menu, shows up about halfway down.