Problem signing up

If you are trying to sign up for a Freecycle account and the SIGN UP button doesn't activate and turn green after you have filled in all the fields, this should help:

There are four data fields on the Sign Up page for Freecycle.org. Those data fields are:

• Username (This will be visible to other Freecycle members. It can only include letters, numbers, plus sign, and minus sign.)
• Email (Must be a valid email address)
• Password
• Confirm Password

Before the SIGN UP button will turn green and be activated, the system checks to ensure that valid data has been entered into each field.

If you see a red message under the Username field (typically: "Username contains prohibited characters") then you may need to remove those characters. Once corrected, please make the cursor active by clicking into a different field. By doing this, the Sign Up form will re-check the new or corrected Username for availability and character compliance.

For the Password and Confirm Password fields, the system can be a little trickier.

If the Password and Confirm Password fields have been auto-filled by either a browser or a password manager, these fields will often show a shaded background (typically yellow) and also indicate that data (a password) has been entered.

Shading in these fields indicates that nothing has been physically typed (with an actual or virtual keyboard) into these fields. Therefore, the system thinks those fields are empty - even though they're not!

Similarly, if the Password and Confirm Password fields were filled in by using the 'copy/paste' command, those fields may NOT be shaded. Their background may appear to be white, with password data in them. However, the system may still consider that nothing has been typed into those fields

To get around this, there are two methods.

• Make the cursor active at the end of the Password field's data and then TYPE any single character after the existing password. Hit the Backspace button to remove that character. Repeat for the Confirm Password field.

OR

• Add the SAME single character to EACH of the Password fields - don't forget to add that SAME character to wherever the password has been stored (by the browser or password manager.)

Once these steps have been completed, the form should accept that appropriate data has been typed into them, and the Sign Up button should change to green and be activated.

If you're seeing something different, or if you're still having difficulty, please click on Contact above to send our Help Team volunteers a message. Please try to include a screenshot in your message. Screenshots help us a great deal!