If you recently logged in to make a new blog post, clicked on Posts > Add New, and went to use your Visual Editor options, you may have found yourself muttering, “Where did my underline button go? Where did my Paste from Word option go? Why did they change things? Why did they take away my favorite stuff???
This is the place to find out what happened, what you get with the upgraded version and how to put your favorite editing option buttons back on the toolbar.
- Support for creating and editing tables
- More options for inserting lists
- Search and Replace in the editor
- Ability to set Font Family and Font Size
- Insert Image, Video or Link, all from one drop-down menu
- And much more!
Here’s what happened: When WordPress upgraded to version 3.9, it updated the TinyMCE Visual Editor plugin.
At first, you might find yourself saying, “Yay! Upgrades to make things simpler!” And that’s true. One of the benefits of this upgrade is a series of helpful drop-down menus to make things easier for you when working from the Visual editor tab.
For example, if you want to add a bullet point list to your article, you can click the list button and choose from the drop-down menu which style you’d like (default, circle, disc or square), and the editor plugs in that kind of design. All you have to do is start typing the first item in your list and hit enter to add each consecutive item.
Or, if you want to insert a video, all you have to do is click Insert and choose “insert video” from the drop-down options available (insert video, image, link, special character, etc.). Quick and easy!
There are helpful buttons for everything from font colors to formatting text to inserting tables to adding an excerpt via the “more” tag.
However… as helpful as this upgrade may be, you may notice that some of your favorite and familiar options are missing. Where’s the Underline button? Where’s the Paste as Text button? Where did they go and how can you get them back?
Have no fear. With the TinyMCE Advanced Plugin, you can add, remove and re-arrange the icons on the Visual Editor.
Here’s what you do:
- From the Dashboard, go to Settings > TinyMCE Advanced.
- From the Unused Buttons section, drag anything you want and drop it onto any of the 4 available lines above (see screenshot below for detail). HINT: The top two lines are preferred.
- Once you have all your preferred buttons, feel free to move them around on the lines to re-arrange them any accessible way that makes the most sense to you.
- When you’re done, scroll down and click Save at the bottom of the page.
The next time you go to Posts > Add New and start typing a new entry, you should see all your chosen button options above the main content field, ready for you to use however you like.
