Understanding the bulk launch wizard steps

Every launch in uplads runs through a single guided wizard. Once you pick an ad account and open New Launch, the wizard carries your creatives, targeting, and copy from the media library all the way to Meta. This article explains each step, when one of them is skipped, and how to move around without losing your place.

The five steps

The wizard always has the same five stages, shown as a row of pill-shaped indicators across the top:

1. Creatives — choose what you're launching: media from your library, existing Facebook ads to relaunch, or a creator's post for a partnership ad.
2. Targeting — pick your Page (and Instagram account), campaign, and ad sets. You can also create a campaign or ad set inline here.
3. Text — write your primary text, headlines, description, destination URL, and call-to-action. This is also where you build carousel or multi-language (DLO) ads.
4. Review — confirm everything, edit ad names, and adjust the naming schema for this launch before anything is sent.
5. Launch — set the ad status (Paused or Active), launch, and watch progress.

A completed step shows a checkmark; the current step is highlighted; steps you haven't reached yet are greyed out. The indicator at the top is your map and your remote control at the same time.

When the Text step is skipped

The Text step (step 3) is automatically skipped in two modes, because there's no ad copy for you to write:

• Relaunch mode — when you select one or more existing Facebook ads on the Creatives step, the wizard reuses each ad's original copy. See how to relaunch existing Facebook ads.
• Partnership / Spark mode — when you point the wizard at a creator's organic post, that post is promoted as-is. See how to launch partnership / Spark ads.

In both cases the Text indicator dims, and Next jumps straight from Targeting (step 2) to Review (step 4). In a normal launch from your media library, the Text step appears as usual — that's where you write ad copy, URLs and CTAs.

Jumping back vs. locked steps

You can freely click any step you've already reached to jump back to it — for example, returning from Review to Targeting to add another ad set. The only step you can't click is one ahead of where you've been; the wizard won't let you skip work that isn't done.

This changes the moment you launch. Once a launch is queued, the wizard locks every earlier step. Only the Launch step stays clickable, because it holds your live progress and results. This is deliberate: re-editing creatives or targeting after launch wouldn't affect the ads already on their way to Meta, so those steps are frozen to avoid confusion. When you're ready for a fresh launch, use Start another launch on the success screen to reset the wizard back to step 1 (your Page selection is kept so you don't re-pick it every time).

Browser Back/Forward and the URL

The wizard reflects your current step in the address bar as a ?step= parameter — creatives, targeting, text, review, or launch. Because of this:

• Browser Back and Forward move you between steps just like the indicator buttons do.
• Refreshing the page keeps you on the same step (your draft is saved — see how drafts auto-save and resume).
• A direct link like …/launch?step=review lands you on that step, as long as you've legitimately reached it.

After a launch is queued, pressing Back is intercepted: the wizard returns you to the locked Launch step and rewrites the URL so the address bar matches.

What maxStepReached means for deep links

The wizard remembers the furthest step you've validly reached — internally called maxStepReached. This is the guardrail behind every navigation path. A ?step= link or a back/forward press can never land you beyond that furthest point, so a stale or hand-edited URL can't drop you onto a step whose earlier work isn't filled in. If you deep-link to review but have only completed Targeting, the wizard quietly clamps you to where you actually are.

In short: you can always move backward to anything you've finished, the URL stays in sync so refresh and Back/Forward just work, and you can never jump ahead of your real progress. From here, head to the first-launch quickstart to put it all together.