As
inbound marketers
, we've all experienced it. The extremely frustrating and productivity-debilitating error message that either makes you want to pull out all your hair in frustration, fall to your knees and scream, or just break down and cry.
So the next time you experience one of the following "why me?" moments, remember, you're not alone...
10 Error Messages That Make Marketers Cry
1. "Microsoft ____ Has Stopped Working" You know the feeling. You've just created the first 10 slides of your awesome new presentation in PPT or finished up some crazy complicated pivot table in Excel. Or maybe you just completed the first few pages of your new ebook drafted in Word when ... BAM! Microsoft Office crashes. Right before you've had a chance to click "save." You've lost an hour's worth of work, it's time to start from scratch, and the depression is starting to sink.
2. "We're sorry. [Insert Browser Name] had a problem and crashed." Bye-bye unsaved blog post and strategically placed tabs -- your faithful internet browser has just crashed. And you can just forget about figuring out what click-path you took to navigate to that super helpful article with that awesome statistic you need for your presentation/ blog post /email send. What was the name of that website again?
3. "Are You Sure You Want to Delete?" Yes ... wait ... NOOOOOO! If you've ever conveniently had a brain fart or perfectly timed nervous twitch when that message has popped up, you can likely relate. So long content, full landing page, and video whose original file location is impossible to find. Accidental deletion is not easy to recover from.
4. "Post Successfully Published" The root word "success" makes it sound like a good thing, right? Not when that tweet was meant for your personal account, not your business' company account. Let's just hope it wasn't too inappropriate.
5. "Your upload failed." Picture the scenario: You're uploading a particularly lengthy video to YouTube, the upload status bar is at a promising 99%, and up pops this error message. Thanks for leading me on, YouTube...
6. "Delivery has failed to [insert recipients' email addresses]." This happy little message usually appears after you've sent an email including too many file attachments or those that are too big to handle for the recipients' inbox. Bonus: you'll usually receive these errors about 10 minutes after you thought your email was successfully delivered.
7. [Insert Image of a Whale Being Supported by Twitter Birds]: Aaah, the good ole' Twitter Fail Whale. A regular character in the early days of Twitter , this whale has been known to make random appearances even today. Nice try posting that tweet. Now it's literally time to wail.
8. "Error Code 4506." Right, as if I even know what that means! At least tell me why . I'm not Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code. Nor do I have the time, the desire, nor the capability to decipher your codes!
9. "The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like update the Adobe Updater now?" Congratulations, Adobe. You win the award for snarkiest error message ever. For serious? An update that depends on other updates...which depend on even more updates? There goes an hour of my productivity.
10. [Insert Image of the Blue Screen of Death] The mother of all error messages. If this one doesn't make you cry, no other error message will. Thanks computer gods. Goodbye hard drive.
Other error messages got you down? Seek some support in the comments.
Image Credit: Andrew Mccluskey
Natalie 5:09 PM on October 21, 2011
Haha we hate them all, too. Especially numbers 2, 8, and 10!! Ugh!
Ethan Poltrack 5:11 PM on October 21, 2011
What a fantastic niche to get into! I never would have thought about error messages. Great stuff thank you
Douglas Kelly 5:32 PM on October 21, 2011
I don't get MS errors any more. Not since I bought Macs. Now I only get twitter errors. Are they owned by MS?
Beth Kessler 5:34 PM on October 21, 2011
I love that you outlined these all into one spot! First time for me seeing #9 the Adobe updated updater updating your files message ha. This brought a great start to the end of my work day :).
Philip Taylor 6:05 PM on October 21, 2011
Ah, the best is #10, the infamous "blue screen." Any other error may be recoerable, but not that!
Brendon Kelly 9:15 PM on October 21, 2011
Hubspot, I love you.
Steve @ web marketing works 12:52 PM on October 22, 2011
LMAO! This is so true "3" happens to me all the time. Great compilation of gaffs!
nss 3:33 PM on October 22, 2011
The first one is painful. Once the moment i finished preparing my ppt presentation, my PC crashed. I also don't like the 6th one.
EdgarRoberto 6:19 PM on October 22, 2011
this web really rocks ----
i love it
Delaware SEO 11:22 PM on October 22, 2011
Browser crashing is probably the worst nowadays, too many tabs open at once!
Gerri 12:36 AM on October 23, 2011
This is just fantastic! Reminds of the number of times when technology has failed me and made me want to scream!
Austin SEO 3:15 AM on October 24, 2011
For a very long time I have been thinking that I am alone, good to share the experience, how do we overcome these challenges, they make me scream especially 1, 2 and 10...
Arne 7:55 AM on October 24, 2011
""Delivery has failed to [insert recipients' email addresses]." This happy little message usually appears after you've sent an email including too many file attachments or those that are too big to handle for the recipients' inbox. Bonus: you'll usually receive these errors about 10 minutes after you thought your email was successfully delivered."
It pays off to actually read the error message. Sometimes it is an attachment error (message too big, but hey who is naive enough to e-mail 10mb+ files), mailbox-error (mailbox full, should have sent a link) or configuration error. Reading it will actually inform you you've messed up (10mb in an email!!!) or someone else messed up....
Tony 6:47 AM on October 25, 2011
one word of advice....
apple