Visual Editor Not Working – Urgent Help Please!

Same issue. Tried every possible solution. No luck. Any updates ?

Hello gkarmas,

Yes, I was able to fix it! I’m sorry to hear you’ve similarly tried many solutions.

As a few people have mentioned in my forum searches relating to this issue – the cause is different for everyone’s situation – so it requires patience as you try to learn what yours may be.

It turned out my issue was that I exported a blog from my client’s old website which was a) an outdated version of WordPress and b) corrupted by hackers and taken down by her old web host (2MHost – low quality providers with poor security standards and email support only).

One or both of those reasons had to be the issue because I tried everything else. Therefore, I called our current hosting provider (iPower – higher quality with better security standards and 24 hour call/email support) and requested that the website be reverted back in time just before I imported the corrupted blog.

Due to the reversion in time I lost some edits on the site that I did after the blog import but it was worth it to at least finally see the visual editor working again and just continue forward.

So, in a summation, my cause was due to imported corrupted files. It made the WordPress interface glitch.

Good luck on your search!!!

Thank you so much robinanonymous for your detailed reply.
So, my question is, are you on 4.4.1 now or back to 4.4.0? Because I am starting to think that this is an incompatibility issue with my current theme or visual composer.

OK. Problem solved. Sometimes it’s the most stupid thing that comes last in mind.
Go to Users, Admin and make sure ‘Disable the visual editor when writing’ box is NOT ticked.
It automatically went off somehow with the WP update.

I am also having this problem and “disable the visual editor when writing” is not selected.

Any other suggestions or updates to this? I have tried editing the wp-config.php file, I’ve looked at the “disable visual editor,” box under users/admin to make sure it was not check marked. I manually re-installed WordPress.

I spent the entire day editing a site with no problems at all. I was making one change, on one page, went to the “text” editor tab to remove a hard coded font style that should not have been there, removed it, updated, checked the page, it looked perfect, closed the page, opened Posts to post a new blog post and boom, visual editor will not respond.

I did not update, add or do anything to any plugins. Nothing major was updated or changed, not in settings, theme, nothing.

I have tried all the other suggestions regarding disabling plugins, and the like. I’m having no luck. I can use the text editor for now to get it done, but really prefer the visual as its quicker to see it.

Thanks for any help.

Wow, nice timing hljeffries! Just checked my email. (It seems I accidentally missed RebelDietitian’s post. Sorry.)

Regarding the hard coded font style that should not have been there – why was it there in the first place? I figure starting here is the most important thing to consider. This is because everything was working normally up until the point that you edited the hard code.

For example, if that hard-code was automated through a plug-in then chances are that the plug-in itself is faulty – even if it worked just fine before. If a plug-in is faulty it can do serious damage to the functionality of your back and front end. Whether or not you like it, your only option is to deactivate and delete the plug-in entirely. After deleting, if the issue still remains that means the damage has already been done so you will have to call your host and ask them to backup your site to just before you made that edit. (This is what I had to do. Annoying because I had to re-do some edits but at least everything was working again!)

Anyway, the point is where did this hard-code come from?? Let’s start with the origin of the issue.

It was there, because we previously had a business partner who outsourced the design of our site to someone who designed a clunky, outdated, visually sad thing. He had not used any CSS, everything was in HTML only. When we dropped the partner, our site was handed back over to us and total mess. I have spent the last year and a half cleaning things up. The site is quite large so every once in a while I do find something that’s off or irregular and generally it is a line of HTML for a font style, size or color that is overriding the CSS in design. My favorite is when I find ‘table’ commands placed for absolutely no reason whatsoever which disrupts the pages ability to easily be mobile friendly.

I opened a page in visual, scanned through it as we were changing an image, I changed the image, still all good, then I noticed that there was one line of heading text that was displaying differently than the our site’s pre-sets. Normally – if I highlight the text and select the heading style from the drop down, it adds the coding of ‘<h4>’ or whatever I’ve selected, but because the HTML is still there telling it a shade of red and verdana at a 18, it still displays that. I’ve just come to a place where I switch right over to text editor, scroll down to that area, delete the HTML and type in the ‘<h>’ I want displayed. Update, go back to visual and there it is.

I don’t mind using the text editor because I’ve been building and coding sites since the 90s so I can visualize what it will display as while I’m typing it, but given the choice, I would of course rather use the visual editor. I have already gone through all the plug ins. Disabled all and started going through one at a time. Nothing changed. I did a reinstall of WordPress and that did nothing. I even attempted to just delete the page I had changed things on altogether. That seemed silly to me, but at this point – I’d try anything, but that did not change anything either.

When I open a page or post to edit, it opens in Text editor. If I click on the visual tab, I get an empty white board space without the tab itself looking like I actually switched to visual (as in, which one appears highlighted for selection). I spoke with my hosting provider (HostGator) and was told it was a Word Press issue, I needed to speak with their support team.

@hljeffries Aw man, pure HTML outsourcing sounds like a total nightmare. I was going to provide an obvious suggestion (rebuild the site) but if it is pretty big and you have already been editing for over a year I can understand the inability to easily transition.

The only conclusion I can imagine that could potentially be causing this issue (if that is sincerely the only edit you recall making when visual began dysfunctioning) is this…

WordPress was updated not long ago and the editor is updated frequently . As you know, it is extremely rare that any modern site is built on HTML alone. So, perhaps as WordPress and the editor evolve they’re developed to co-adapt with the way most modern sites are built; a combination of HTML, CSS, JS, etc. Maybe some edit you did around that time or previously has had a dysfunctional effect on the way the scripts recognize a function via the updates.

Whether or not this is potentially the case – my only suggestion would be to call HostGator and have them backup your site to just before the dysfunction occurred. Again, apologies if you have to redo edits but you’re better off doing that if it means you can continue working again.

Meanwhile, God bless your soul on that kind of site! (I’m not religious – just feel sympathy for having to go through that back-and-forth. lol)

ROFL

Yeah – if the site were smaller I would have done that – but it’s huge with blogs, articles, shopping cart, products – etc. We’ve been online since 2000 – so yeah – it’s extensive.

Since HostGator insists that’s a Word Press problem – they basically have said they do not recommend the back up and suggested I try Word Press support again.

I did not know the site was outsourced and done in HTML. Had it been discussed with us back when it was done, I would have said forget it and done it myself then. I found out when everything was transferred back to us. I ended up exporting the posts, pages and media to a sub directory. Importing just pages and media. It worked great especially due to our size and readership/traffic, I had to do one of those – “Our site will be done between 3am and 4amEST for updates,” then transferred everything over and live during that time.

I’ve been going through with a fine tooth comb since then making sure all the old coding was cleaned out. I’ve never had a problem in all this time with something like this. And yes – regarding the editor updates – that’s why I did a manual reinstall of WordPress hoping it was something minor like that. Yes, I deleted that one line of the HTML coding for font face, size and color, updated, and the visual editor stopped working. Worked fine for the 10 hours I spent on it prior to that – deleted that one line and it stopped. Guess I’ll find it eventually.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

Hi gkarmas

You are a life saver as this has been driving me nut’s for two days.

Started doing like everyone else, slowly deactivating plugins to see what is happening.
When I came across your post I just had that feeling and yes the box was checked.

You have saved my days going through all that and getting no where

A big thank you

Toby963