I'll be answering my own question just because I think it's useful. And I've seen a lot of people struggle with this. I'll be doing this tutorial in chrome, but would be happy to do it in another browser if needed.

Problem: For whatever reason, an error, or your message became too long, etc. When you preview your message, a popup appears and you can't get out of it, nor view your message due to the grey unclickable background.



No one likes to lose messages that they've spent a lot of time on. Even the purple morkko above is angry about it! Recovering your message is a little bit tricky, but can be well worth it.


INSTRUCTIONS

Step 1: Right click anywhere on the screen and click "Inspect Element"


A scary window full of HTML should appear. That's a good sign!

Step 2: Use the "Find/Search" feature. Command + F on a mac. Use the equivalent for a PC. (Make sure you've clicked somewhere in the scary window full of HTML, so that you are searching within that window.)

Search for "#openmessage"



Step 3: Click the highlighted block that you found and press the delete key. The popover should disappear. You're 3/5 of the way there!

You should have something like this now. Your message with a grey background making it so you can't click on anything.


Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3, except search for "#openmessagebg"


Done! You should now be able to scroll through and copy your message and paste it in a safe place (text-edit, google-docs, etc). Do not try to press preview again or send message. Start a new message.

Hope this helped!