Can’t drag and drop blocks in 5.5

Hiya,

The drag and drop is available by clicking, and holding down, on the up or down buttons for a second, you can then drag the block around.

Although this isn’t very obvious, it’s an interface that is being iterated on, and will hopefully be more intuitive with the next update, until then we can only apologize for the confusion.

Ah thanks! I really tried hard to find how it works ??
A square with a little hand inside would be very clear I think ??

Isn’t very obvious? Holy moly, that’s the understatement of the year. I’m trying to love the block editor, but this is exactly the sort of nonsense that causes me to pull my hair out every time I try to use it. UGH. What is happening to WordPress? (No need to answer that; it’s a rhetorical question.)

BTW, THANK YOU Jack for posting the question and to Marius for graciously answering it.

I still don’t understand how exactly does it work. I press up and down buttons and nothing happens.

Don’t press the arrow; drag it to the location you want to move the block and release it.

Also of note, if it’s the uppermost block on the page and you need to drag it up (e.g. out of its container), you can drag the down arrow and the block will still move.

Hope that helps…

Thank you for the solution,

I am really trying with the block editor but it really feels like an uphill battle every time I need to use it – made worse by changes like this.

To give additional info for others who may find this thread — currently to drag and drop in 5.5 you cannot have Top Toolbar turned on, as the method described by @clorith here only works via the inline block-level toolbar.

Thanks, @christinablust.

Allowing the usage of the Top Toolbar without warning the user that basic block functionality will be lost is an irresponsible move. I wonder how it was justified.

In the mean time, I had to recreate some blocks or cut and paste block contents, and then fix links as they (due to some otherworldly reason) change when you do that.

This has to be the worst UI design I have ever seen.

Did Microsoft have some input into this design? ??

I just came across this thread while Googling how TF to move blocks in WP 5.5. I agree that this on the surface seems like a highly irresponsible change especially in light of the fact that I didn’t see any onboarding messages giving me hints regarding how to use the updated interface. I can’t understand how this made it past any type of usability testing.

This is not obvious At All! It’s been driving me absolutely crazy – as others have said it is terrible design. The old method was a little fiddly but obvious. This is just as fiddly and completely un-intuitive. But for this post I would still be wondering how on earth to do this ….

Also another observation: the button block (as en example. There may be more) doesn’t have up and down arrows. Just sideways ones. You can still drag it … but it will not drop. At least I can’t find a way to get it to work … (Top toolbar is not on)

will hopefully be more intuitive with the next update, until then

We hold our breath and hope so too.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Fillip.

Agree. 5.5 making it very difficult to move blocks. I can move up and down with arrows but cannot drag into a column or group. Eg I want to move a group of buttons into a column, thats in a group. I can move above or below the group with the arrow tools. But no option to drag into the column. Very frustrating and backwards compared to 5.4!

Just want to add to the chorus on this UI change. I spent at least two hours trying to figure out which one of my plugins was causing the drag handle to disappear from all my blocks. There is no way I would have figured it out had I not found this thread. Very thankful for this forum.