Agh! Formatting in the rich text editor in CMS!

I don’t know about you guys, but having to constantly format simple text, copied from other sources into the CMS ‘Rich Text’ editor is driving me crazy!

When I copy in a paragraph of text, either the lines get separated into multiple different paragraphs and/or many of the words no longer have spaces between them. Sizing doesn’t work, bold/italics don’t work. I just spent over an hour re-formatting a full document and I’ve been ‘wasting’ time doing this for months/years.

And yes, I’m using MS Word. And yes, I realise the experience is much better with Google Docs. But like most of the global population who use word processing tools, I don’t use Google docs and I need to use MS Word for work purposes. How can Webflow ignore this!?

Beyond this, the functionality in the ‘Rich Text’ editor is so basic. I understand that there may be improvements on the horizon, but I heard this 18 months ago and nothing has changed (pasting images excluded).

The whole editor needs a major upgrade. If you want to vote for this, there’s a Wish in the Wishlist that’s gaining some traction. Here it is:

https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-489

Any thoughts?

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I agree. The rich text block leaves a lot to be desired. I haven’t had to use it much because the majority of my clients prefer me to make updates to their site/blog. However, I have one client right now that wants to be able to make her own updates. I sold her on webflow based on how much easier it is to use over wordpress. Then as I am designing I find out how buggy the rich text editor is. Simple features like being able to resize media being missing is a shame. Especially something that really is the heart of the CMS.

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I know @dapitts08 . It is getting so frustrating now. I just expected improvements to come as time has gone on, but really there hasn’t been any since the CMS launch. It is the lack of compatibility with other programs that is simply causing most of the errors I think. I almost have to double my time estimate for the documents I write to take account of all the formatting I need to do when dealing with the CMS.

YES YES YES I wish they would at minimum consider Textbox.io or TinyMCE for Rich Text Editing

This feature is NEEDED for a better end user experience .

I LOVE Webflow but the Editor could use a few simple tweaks ESPECIALLY when is come to editing formatted text in Rich Text fields. ALL I am asking for is an editor ( JUST LIKE THE ONE I AM USING NOW IN THIS WISHLIST ) where the client can easily format there text without trying to figure out the HTML Tags, or where they can EASILY Copy & Paste their MS Word or Doc content without the formatting skewing.

I am fighting so hard to keep my client in Webflow Hosting BUT the are constantly complaining, when attempting to paste content from a document the editor seems to change their text, randomly adding and removing line breaks and spaces, causing them to have to practically retype all of the content in the field the entire field.

I am with YOU… Webflow PLEASE help with this feature

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I totally hear you @terhen

However, I’ve been pushing this for 2 years now and nothing really has changed.

So, although I am always hopeful and Webflow has certainly made huge strides over this period, I sadly doubt we will be seeing major improvements on this topic soon, even though it is so desperately needed. That is, unless more people are vocal about this in the forum or on the Wishlist.

any comment @PixelGeek?

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I also find this bug happens a lot. I use “paste as plain text” to solve this (But like this i need to format again the heading h1-6 from word).

image

Also the rich text not support RTL (Under the editor/designer).

I agree the text editor on webflow “need more power”.

In general on move from word to software/text-editor X (include adobe indesign) - you find this 3 mistakes (That client do):

(This three will make problem also in adobe indesign the best tool for text).

My advice. Before you give client X a site - Teach him the difference between a paragraph and a line break (Famous problem) + Dont click enter for spaces + please use heading (H2 to H6) - the H1 generate by webflow CMS most ot the times. Will solve 60% of the problems.

I have tried every suggestion but my client has a standard post format of paragraph with first line in bold. A bulleted list and another paragraph. How can I make it easy for her to cut and paste this without reformatting it in the editor…

@terhen75 - You don’t indicate what you client is pasting from.

You could show them to use these helpful shortcuts;
CMD+B (CTRL+B on Windows) makes text bold
Typing in a dash (-) followed by a space creates a bullet list item

Clients do a lot of strange things with text formatting and complain about why things look like crap when pasted in from Word. Squarespace had a nice ‘paste as plain text’ feature that worked very nice and removed al lot of problems made in Word.

Image cropping would also be a very nice feature in Rich text. A tables, for god’s sake, tables!!

You could vote for improvements to it.

https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-489

Personally I would be very happy with markdown support. My clients already use that. Pasting from stackedit.io html seems to work well. As for tables it’s html embed to the rescue.

Would appreciate some comment from Webflow staff if possible …

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@webdev Thanks for linking to the Wishlist. However, the wish was posted TWO years ago (by me) and literally nothing has changed to ease this process. Yes, the CMS editor needs a total overhaul but I would have expected at least SOME improvements over the past two years.

Come on Webflow, your product is so good but please consider this as a key focus for improvement over the coming months, if it’s not in the pipe already.

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Part of my reasoning for investing time in learning Webflow is the ‘user friendly CMS’ - but after digging into it a little deeper today I have to say I’m super disappointed with the functionality of the text editor.

Want to centre some text - sorry, can’t do that.
Want to put two images next to each other - sorry.
Want to add a table to my page - nup.
Want to add an indent to some text - ahh… nada.
Want to undo something - not possible.

All of the latest updates with grid and the freelancer journey videos are great for us designers, (and great for marketing Webflow) but it doesn’t mean much if our clients can’t do the most basic of functions on the editor side.

How can I confidently sell the Webflow CMS and Editor to my clients knowing they cannot do all of the things they can do in Squarespace or Wordpress editors?

It’s really disheartening to see people have been asking about this for YEARS, and yet, this side of the Webflow offering is still so far behind.

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