Welcome back!
It’s going to be an exciting few days here at the new Open Diary – over a year of work has gone into moving all of the old diary contents to a new, more secure, stable environment and building an entirely new version of Open Diary on top of it. I want to first thank the team that has helped through all of that – there are a number of engineers, designers, and systems experts that have worked very hard to get us to where we are.
I also really, really want to thank the group of testers that has been posting, noting, and interacting here for the last few months. The feedback we have received from all of you has been invaluable and has really helped us to get to today. Thanks very much to all of you!
A few notes
For those of you who have just arrived, please have a look at each thing below:
- check out the options under the new navigation menu – you can get to it by clicking the round icon in the upper right of any screen. Under there you will find access to your profile, your Friends list, Diary Circles, and your diary front page.
- have a look at the Help documentation, it’s also on that menu – there’s a lot of answers there!
- when you’re ready to write an entry, click the pen and paper icon in the upper right to the left of the bell icon.
- be aware that the settings for your diary like privacy (Public, Members Only, Friends Only, Private) are in the Settings section under Profile on the menu.
- when you want to add a new Friend, look for a “plus sign” icon next to people’s name on the front page or on their diary front page. If you click the plus icon, it will send a Friend request to that person – but you won’t actually become friends until that person accepts (this is something that is different from old OD).
- be aware that if you just came back, you are on a 30-day free subscription and will have full access to the site for that time (except uploading images, which is reserved for paid members).
About subscriptions
While we are talking about subscriptions – the decision to make OD a subscription-only site was made with a lot of consideration and a LOT of very positive back and forth with our staff and discussion with the testing users. It was not a choice we made lightly, but it is one that we consider absolutely necessary. We think believe that social networks today (and the way people interact on the Internet) are broken – and this is because their main goal is to sell more advertising. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – all of them, their businesses are built around selling ads – and for that reason they do a lot of things with the user experience that is not good for the user (like selling your data, manipulating what you see in your feed, pushing sponsored posts on you). Our goal is to provide the best possible experience for our members first, and for that reason we have chosen to be a subscription service.
Everybody coming back to OD or starting a new diary receives a 30-day free subscription for full access to the site (except for image upload, as I said above). During the thirty days, you can upgrade at any time to a monthly subscription for $3.99 or annual subscription for $39.99. However – if you had a Lifetime subscription on the old site, that Lifetime subscription is still in effect and you will not have to pay for a new subscription.
If you choose not to upgrade to a paid subscription, you will still have full access to the site for thirty days. After the thirty day free subscription expires, you will continue to have full access to your own diary – you will be able to read, edit, or change your existing entries, and when we add options for downloading or deleting diaries (which are both planned for the future) you will be able to delete or download your diary. All of this will not require a paid subscription.
What you will lose at the end of the thirty days is the ability to post new entries, read other member’s entries, or to post notes on other members’ diaries – this ability is reserved for members of the site with paid subscriptions. If you start a subscription and later choose not to continue, your diary will revert to the same status – you will continue to have access to your diary, but not be able to write or note unless you start another subscription (which you can do at any time).
What’s coming
We have a lot of things planned for the future for Open Diary – the testing we have been doing with the group that is here has given us a lot of things to work on! Some of the features that you will be seeing in the future are:
- Diary Search – this is a big one, and something we are working on as fast as possible to get added to the site. Today, there is no way for you to search for other diaries, other than finding them on the front page or through notes on other people’s entries. We will be adding a search function very soon that will let you search for other members by name.
- All Notes view – one of the best parts of old OD was that there was a page where you could see all the notes that have been left to you – we are waiting for an update from one of our software vendors to be able to turn that on here, but that will hopefully come soon.
- Improved notifications – today, you will get notifications at the top of the screen if somebody leaves you a new note, replies to your note, mentions you, or makes a friend request. We will be expanding that in the future so you will also get notifications for entries in circles you belong to, and other things that are important to you.
- Diary customization – honestly, this is something I am very on the fence about. We have had some of our testing users ask if they could be able to change the colors, fonts, etc. of their diaries like in the old site – and we have had some who have been very happy that we don’t have that because it’s easier to navigate the site. So we will be looking into this, and probably talk to the community more about it, to figure out what makes sense.
- Much, much more – our Engineering team has a very long to-do list that will keep us busy adding new things for months to come – but if you have an idea for something you think the site needs, please let us know!
Questions or problems
Lastly, if you have questions or problems while using the site, be sure to hit the Contact Support link at the bottom of any page – this will let you send a message to our support team, who will help get your question answered or problem solved. I’m always happy to get notes, but it’s not always the fastest way to get a response!
Welcome back everyone!!
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So glad to get an update about all notes, I understand that is not a small thing so I don’t blame you for easing it in. I also think that Reader’s Choice needs to be considered for resurrection as well. Congrats on the relaunch… and so it begins!
@peter_24601 I forgot about “Reader’s Choice.” But I agree, bring it back. Good suggestion!
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Yay, Thank you for everything!! 🙂
@butterfly4him you’re welcome!
@thediarymaster : YAY!!! Here we all go!! It’s Adventure Time!!
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Woot!!! Happy about having our Open Diary back 🙂 Looking forward to lots more diarists returning.
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Your plate is full, but one of the things that made the old OD for me was the random button. Maybe I just used it as a procrastinating tool… but it allowed me to find other writers I normally wouldn’t have. It encouraged interaction, and on a more intimate level than you’ll find on Facebook and Twitter.
@kingofi wow, I had actually forgotten about the Random button – I would love to bring that back, thanks for the suggestion (and reminder)! I will put it on the list to look into.
@kingofi Another good suggestion! I second that.
@kingofi I had forgotten all about the random button! I would love to see it come back- I also found a lot of interesting people via the random button.
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While I am sad that I can’t access my old diary, I am so happy that OD is back. Here’s to making new friends and hopefully finding some old ones.
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WOOHOO!!!! Welcome back, everyone!!!
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Welcome Home everyone!!!
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Thank you for bringing this site back! It’s like reconnecting with an old friend. 🙂
@rubykisses you’re welcome!
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I almost missed opening day! Congratulations on getting us here! Full Steam Ahead!
@petersshadow Thanks!
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Welcome back all. I am just so glad to be here, again. There was never another home for me. I look forward to cutting back on my FB use.
I suppose it is time for me to peruse the help menu, because there doesn’t appear to be a simple way to add a photo to an entry, so I am certain it is user error.
Oh, welcome, welcome, welcome back, Odie.
@e3 that’s all so nice to hear, thank you! The photo upload is not available to people on a free subscription, if you upgrade in the future you will be able to do it!
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I am so happy to be back home.
@goodbyebleeder We’re happy to have you!
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Exciting, exciting, exciting! So glad to be back. Lots of good stuff to look forward to. Thanks for everything DiaryMaster (and all). I can tell you have been hard at work with what you’ve accomplished so far. Thanks again and congratulations on a spectacular opening day.
@wildrose_2 thank you!
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So exciting! Reminds me of the old Girl Scout song:
…make new friends, but keep the old,
one is silver and the other’s gold…
Can’t wait for both to arrive. 😀
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Oh how nice it is not to have to use the tester password.
WELCOME BACK EVERYONE!!!!!!
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I am so glad OD is back up and running!
What made OD feel so ‘homey’ to me was the ability to be able to customise the backgrounds and colours so much. Is there a way you would be able to allow users to ‘disable’ being able to see how other users have customised their diaries so that everyone is happy?
@driftune we are thinking about this, and that may be one approach – thanks for the suggestion, it’s a good one!
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Hi Everyone! Happy to be back!!
@caterpillardreams we’re happy to have you here!
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I have a question that wasn’t covered. Since we have a free 30 days, when we upgrade to say the extra month, do we now have 60 days or do we lose the free 30 days?
@adriennebrody that is a good question and one we didn’t think about! The way it is now, the subscription would start when you sign up, so you would lose whatever free days you had. Like I said, hadn’t really thought about that, but that’s how it works 🙂
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So happy you got this back up and running Bruce, miss you and everyone else. And you are 100% right about other social media outlets selling ads and stuff. I’d rather pay a small fee and not have pop ups and ads infecting me everywhere i turn.
@red_the_dark_prince so nice to here that you agree!
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So strange… purely on a whim, I just tried opendiary.com and discovered it was recently revived. Yay! WB everyone
@allisonii that’s awesome, welcome back!
@allisonii Ditto!
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Perhaps a compromise for those that want colors and those that don’t, maybe either having it just so it changes the users interface?
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…or having a few preset themes?
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Having read your explanation for a fee only service, I still think there should be a free option & that people should be able to chose if they want to pay or not. You can’t just compare OpenDiary to Twitter & Facebook. Comparing a diary site to social media is like comparing apples to oranges. You have to compare it to other diary sites. Having ads doesn’t change what else people see on the front page here. Those who don’t want ads could pay. If you won’t change that, I will be writing at ProseBox. It’s free & it works plus I have found a great group of people who have been there for me & I’m not gonna ditch them now. I say this as someone who was on OD since early days & was very excited to hear about it’s return. & as someone who still holds out hope that you will listen to the voices of those who are asking for a free option.
@s1nglet0n thanks for that input, I really appreciate it and respect what you are saying. However, it’s not just about the ads it’s also about being able to build a site and business that can grow and thrive, and also that doesn’t need to start selling user data or manipulate feeds, etc. to keep the site alive. It’s a tough decision, but it’s one we think is the right one for OD. Thanks again for the detailed explanation.
@thediarymaster – I completely understand what you’re saying but for me.. I am BROKE. Like.. most days can’t put food in the fridge broke and just recently finally stopped being homeless. I have been with OD since I was.. 11? and now I’m 31. I was very sad to see it go. But I just literally CAN’T pay for it. I just sucks that I can’t come back to my favorite site because there’s not a free option. And it’s awesome that we get 30 days.. but I kinda don’t even wanna use the 30 days just to get addicted again and then be booted. I’m really sad about it. I just don’t understand why everything in the world that’s enjoyable has to require money. It sucks sucks SUCKS! =[
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Hi DM, do Members only entries not show on the front page? I just posted but I don’t see it there.
@almostallgrowdup there’s a sticky thing there that I will explain in an entry. The idea of members-only entries is that they are visible to members who have subscribed – because that keeps somebody from starting a free diary just to harass somebody (if that person posts members-only they won’t be visible to free members). Hope that makes sense, it was the best solution we could arrive at.
@almostallgrowdup yes, correct!
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Will the restoration restore any entries lost in the previous problems with the site? I lost about three years of entries at one point and then later on I think there was another issue where people lost entries. Are those being restored or are those still lost for good?
@sarcasticdan unfortunately, those will not be restored – what we have are all of the entries and notes from when the site shut down, that is what will come back. Thanks!
@thediarymaster – yea my whole diary is gone. =[ I was hoping that this would restore them but alas no such luck.
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Are we going to get a better version of the friends list? Right now my friends list is pretty confusing to navigate, because it updates based on when the user was “active” (whatever that means – I presume leaving notes on public entries?), but not necessarily with a new entry. I’ve been missing entries and it’s hard to see what I want to catch up on.
@asilliamagdalene yes, we are working on a better version that will be sorted by latest update from the person – you should see that added in the near future.
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Music to my ears!!!! I miss the notes page! Feels great to be home!
@javaqueen it’s great to have you here!
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Ahem… YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
@thestorywriter you are so right YAY!
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Hello everyone! Just wondering how long it takes for a diary to recover? I’m able to recover mine but it’s been at least an hour… and just wondering if I should just go back and leave the page open?
@fridayschild it can take up to 24 hours or more with all the diaries we are processing right now – but you don’t have to leave the page open, you can close it and we will keep working on it. Hopefully you won’t have to wait too long!
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If we could get a nice, sans serif font as a single option to the current default that would be lovely. But NOT Comic Sans. Never, ever Comic Sans. The one in the box where I’m typing this comment would be nice. If it’s going to muck up the works and slow down site navigation, I’m good without it.
@principassapollyanna Point twine, and we are looking at easy ways to offer customization. However, in the meantime, if you select one of the Heading fonts for your text (a smaller one) when you are typing, that will give you a sans serif font.
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Is there a random button? I loved that feature!
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It is so great to be back! Here’s to finding old favorites and finding new ones as well! 💕
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Thank you so much!!
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Thank you so much for bringing this back!
I love the basic look, but maybe the option to change font types would be cool.
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welcome back indeed.!! I literally just thought about open diary this morning and i cant describe my happiness when i found that you had re launched this again!! AND my diary was saved!!! wow … cannot belive it…xxxx
@newspirit hooray! That is awesome!
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Dear Diary Master & the OD team,
Thank you so much for this fresh start and new approach – We are all so happy to back on OD [this site had endured, has been resilient, and will always go from strength to strength with this new focus and ethos].
God bless you all.
Thank you 🙂
@atereques thank you for having faith in us, and welcome back!
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I don’t know what kind of subscription I had the first time that I signed up, but it doesn’t seem to be available now, so I’m signing up again. Money is a bit tight in my life right now, but I don’t believe that it will be a problem to pay $3.99 a month for awhile until I can afford to pay for a year or so at a time. Anyway, I had forgotten about this until I saw it in my Facebook memories, and I’m glad to be back.
@ainsleyjo1952 it’s great to have your here, thanks for coming back!
@thediarymaster — No problem! I’m glad to have stumbled upon you again!
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Love, love, love the lifetime subscription continuance. Thank you. Also really like your picture up there! Its been a long road getting here, hasn’t it? I finally had time, today, to unlock my diary door. I’m going to look around and see what’s what and see if I can do some redecorating and reclaim my freebie diary. Let the good times roll! 😀
@msnosign I’m so glad to have you back! I did think that picture was appropriate (I took it in Idaho) but mostly thinking about having a long road ahead of us. Works either way!
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Thank you for honoring the subscriptions from the original OD…and how nice it is to see so many diarists returning…pretty sweet! 🙂
@commonsensechristian yes we are very excited!
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Thank you!
@spiritedone you’re welcome!
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The ability to manage entries quickly. Right now I have hundreds of old entries that I want to either delete or make private before my diary goes public and the only way I can find to do so is by going through each one individually.
@rodge we will be adding an entry manager in the future, but for now if you want to make all of your old entries private just message the support team through the Contact Support link at the bottom of the page and they can do it for you.
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THANK YOU!!!!
@slimceagirl you’re welcome 🙂
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would really, really, like color customization.
@restlessheartsyndrome we are considering ways to allow customization, we hope to be able to do something in the future. Thanks!
@restlessheartsyndrome me too! Its what made this site so much better than others
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so awesome THANK YOU!
@penny3112 you’re welcome! And thank you for being here!
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One of the best features of the old OD was being able to make our diary what we wanted it to be, a reflection of who we are. I miss the ability to create my own personal atmosphere.
Maybe make an option for those who don’t want to see people’s fonts and colors, to be able to turn that function off (hide it).
Please consider letting us at least have colors?
@dreamstorm we are looking into adding customizations that can be turned off by the viewer, that seems the best way to do it. Thanks!
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and please make the “report note” links smaller and away from the scrolling area? I scroll with my left hand and I just accidentally reported someones note! 🙁
@dreamstorm yes, that is something we are definitely going to do!
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My old diary is restoring as we speak 🙂 I’m just so happy & excited that OD is back. Thank you thank you BIG HUGS! I read about the new things to come & its great. I hopefully wish to have the ability to be able to change the size, type, & color of fonts. And the search engine is a plus also. Again, this has made my day. Have a blessed evening. Hugs from Turtle~
@turtles you are so welcome! It’s so nice to see how excited people are to be back 🙂
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This is probably the best thing that has happened for like… FOREVVVVVVVAAAAA…..😜
thank you so much x
@the5thhorseman you’re welcome, and welcome back!
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So many memories from the early times, poor old Blather, although I saw you preserved his memory. Looking forward to being back, but slightly nervous it will never be like the first time Brit
@brit_2 we will see what it will grow into! Of course, I hope for better and we will do our best to make it so 🙂
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Thanks for resurrecting us 🙂
@cat you’re welcome!
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Request/question: Is there any way to get back what used to be, if I remember correctly, calendars with names of our past entries on them? I used to rely on OD to look up when various key events in my life happened and I would love so VERY much to be able to do that again…
@cat we are working on a calendar view that we will add sometime in the future – I miss that too!
@thediarymaster thanks!
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You know, I wondered about limits on title lengths, but I just wondered if there is a limit on note entry length. I think that would be a good thing to have because people could use this to rant and rave and just go on and on and it wouldn’t be a good thing. Unless you are partial to that sort of thing, in which case there would be nothing wrong with it. It just seems to me that there has to be a limit. But then how do you limit? I don’t even know how the limit was decided on the title but there is one. I discovered that when I attempted to continue writing there. But it seems like there is no limit on the notes. And the character counter is gone. Didn’t there used to be a character counter so you could tell if you were reaching your limit? But I guess there’s no limit now, so why include a character counter. I am having a great time. This is like a challenge for me. How much can I write before I run out of things to say? You know, those inane little things that mean so little that you even wonder why people would even stoop so low as to write them. I think that things that are this long tend to be from wackos. Don’t you? I mean, why would you want to write something that is so ridiculously long? It just doesn’t make sense! I could write a whole fucking entry right here, right now. Is that a hoot in a a holler? And it’s masquerading as a note, but in reality, it’s a whole entry. I can’t believe it myself. Why would I want to write any entry here in the middle of your entries? That’s right, it’s the welcome back entry. I wonder if people should read this and realize that they can write a note that just goes on and on. It’s a blast. I like it lots. You’re a good guy, Bruce. I’m glad that you brought back the open diary. I’m even more glad that I spent the $100 on a lifetime subscription. I thought that the lifetime meant the lifetime of open diary at one time. You know, when you pulled the plug? But the fact that you’re honoring the lifetime subscriptions makes me realize that it’s the lifetime of the writer. I can’t believe it. How long will you keep this website running? Is it forever more? I can imagine dying and then my words live on. Sorta like Blather. Has his diary been reinstated? I remember interacting with him. He was larger than life. Oh well, I ran out of steam. I’m going to sign off now and just say: peace out.
@m_4 thanks!
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Anyone I know back?
@emelyejayne I am 🙂
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So glad to be back!
@woolgatherer we’re glad to have you back!
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I cannot thank you guys enough for bringing this back. My earliest entries are from my 14-year-old self and go all the way through my mid to late 20s. That’s such a rare gift and I’m eternally grateful to have that back. 🙂
@vyntagepink you’re welcome!
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I am beyond excited to be back! I think your idea to make this website subscription-based is actually a great one. It will weed out people who want to spam sites like this, as well as help OD remain a tight-knit community like it was! I’ve so missed this!
I was looking at the Circles. Will we be able to start our own circles like old OD?
@kathleenmarie we are really excited to have you back! You can suggest circles that you would like, by emailing Support through the link at the bottom of the page. Thanks!
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I’m glad OD is back. Is there a plan to bring back the random entry/diary button or are the recent entries on the front page the only way to browse?
@chupacabraterror we will be bringing back some additional navigation and indexes in the future, and are considering the Random button as the site gets larger. Welcome back!
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This may seem like a dumb question but/ how do you pay for subscription?
@johnall67 if you go to your Profile on the main menu and then click on Membership there is a link no there to subscribe. Thanks!
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Thank you so much. I really appreciate the work that you and the team did to bring OD back.
I was harsh and negative and angry when it initially went down, and for that I deeply apologize. I was grieving, and it came out wrong. But that you maintained the data and worked hard to bring it back truly means the world to me.
From the bottom of my heart: Thank you!
@lime_green you’re welcome, and we are so glad you’re back! No worries on being upset at the time – it was a hard time for everybody, and feelings like that are understandable, for sure.
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