Prevent span tags from being removed

Yeah, currently TinyMCE Advanced doesn’t add any extend_valid_elements. That can be added by any WP plugin or theme, the setting is pretty straight-forward: https://www.tinymce.com/wiki.php/Configuration:extended_valid_elements

Thanks Andrew. That was helpful. Took some digging but I found this blog that helped: https://www.engfers.com/2008/10/16/how-to-allow-stripped-element-attributes-in-wordpress-tinymce-editor/

Here was my solution for anyone else looking to do the same thing.

function myextensionTinyMCE($init) {
    // Command separated string of extended elements
    $ext = 'span[id|name|class|style]';

    // Add to extended_valid_elements if it alreay exists
    if ( isset( $init['extended_valid_elements'] ) ) {
        $init['extended_valid_elements'] .= ',' . $ext;
    } else {
        $init['extended_valid_elements'] = $ext;
    }

    // Super important: return $init!
    return $init;
}

add_filter('tiny_mce_before_init', 'myextensionTinyMCE' );

@jason1111 thanks! This kept me from pulling out my hair every time the client used the visual editor, resulting in all my custom styling being removed.

Makes no sense why this is not already accounted for. Should be a built-in rule.

Ditto. That snippet really helped me out, was getting frustrated not being able to use spans in the editor.

Hello,
where do I add the above code from @jason1111?
I put it in functions.php but it had no effect.

thank you

It should work.

Did you place it in the correct theme directory and if so, where exactly in the file did you place the code?

I put it at the end of functions.php.

where must i place the code?