Is Copy And Paste To Rich Text WYSIWYG Editors Problematic?

A rich text editor is a powerful tool that allows developers to quickly create and modify web content. You can use these editors to format text, insert images and videos, add links, and more without writing any code. This is what beginners with little knowledge of HTML like the most about a JavaScript rich text editor. Even professional developers use these editors to speed up web content development. However, many developers find it challenging to copy and paste content correctly from a third-party tool, like MS Word, to a rich text editor.

In this article, we’ll discuss why developers face issues with pasting content from MS Word to rich text editors. We’ll also show you how you can resolve these issues.

Why Should You Use A Rich Text Editor?

A rich text editor lets you create properly formatted websites with images, videos, tables, links, and more. It is also called a WYSIWYG JavaScript editor, as it shows you how your content would appear on a web browser. These editors help developers create and edit web content quickly, as they don’t have to write even a single line of code. However, these editors also have a code view mode that lets you see and edit the HTML of your content. This feature is useful for expert developers with a solid understanding of HTML.

A good WYSIWYG editor comes with almost all the tools and features you would find in a word processor like MS Word. For example, you can use different fonts, font sizes, and font colors, different text alignments, and more to format text. Similarly, you can insert and format rich text media like images and videos.

Why Do Developers Find It Difficult To Copy and Paste Content To Rich Text Editors?

While a rich-text editor JS is similar to a word processor, it isn’t exactly a word processor. That’s why many developers find it difficult to copy and paste content from external sources to a rich text editor. This is because word processors like MS Word aren’t made for creating website content. For this reason, when you copy and paste content from these sources, your website can have invalid HTML markup. And even when there is valid markup, it is not usually not properly formatted for your website.

In other words, content and styling that looks stunning in MS Word would probably look very poor on your website when you copy and paste it. Your content might look fine when you’re publishing it, but wrong formatting can cause trouble later.

Let’s say we want to write the following line in our website using a Website HTML editor:

Froala is the best rich text editor

Here is the properly formatted HTML code for the website:

And here is the code you would get when you copy the text from MS Word and paste it into a WYSIWYG editor:

You can see how messed up the above code is. The hidden styling in your text creates problems when you copy and paste content. So what’s the solution? Read on to learn how you can solve copy and paste issues.

How To Copy and Paste Content From MS Word To A Rich Text Editor Correctly?

Paste As Plain Text

Since the hidden content styling is what creates issues in markup when you copy and paste content, you can resolve these issues by removing the styling. One way to do this is to paste your content as plain text in your rich text editor. Doing this will remove all the hidden syntax, as well as all the formatting. As a result, developers have to format the content again and reapply styling. However, you’ll have properly formatted content for your website.

Clean The Unnecessary Code

Some advanced rich text editors also come with an option to clean all the unnecessary code while keeping the styling. This is a time-saving feature, as developers don’t have to style their content again. However, sometimes there can be missing styling in the rich text editor, and developers would have to reapply it.

Which WYSIWYG Editor Should You Use?

If you’re looking for the best WYSIWYG HTML editor, Froala is definitely the right choice. Froala is a lightweight JavaScript rich text editor that offers a wide range of features to create engaging web content. Thousands of businesses and developers worldwide use Froala rich text editor to create functional websites. No wonder, Froala is the number one rich text editor on G2.

Here is why you should use Froala for web content development:

Can I Copy Content From MS Word and Paste It As Plain Text In Froala?

Froala is a powerful rich text editor that allows you to paste content as plain text. Doing this will remove all the styling, and you will get plain text in the editor.

Does Froala Clean Unnecessary Code When I Copy and Paste Content?

Froala WYSIWYG HTML editor comes with a Word Paste plugin. This plugin gives you the option to keep the code as it is or clean it. When you use the clean option, all the unnecessary code is removed, and the HTML looks good. The best part is that it doesn’t remove any styling. Similarly, you can easily copy and paste content from MS Excel.

In addition to providing impressive copy and paste features, Froala also comes with many other incredible features:

Can I Customize Froala’s Toolbar?

Froala has an efficient toolbar that can accommodate over 100 features at a time. However, Froala also allows you to add and remove tools from the toolbar as per your requirements. It even allows you to fix the toolbar at the top or bottom. Additionally, there is a toolbar offset feature to prevent the toolbar from overlapping with the header on your webpage.

Can I Insert and Edit Images and Videos Using Froala?

Froala HTML editor provides multiple options to insert images and videos. For example, you can upload images/videos by URL or directly from your device. Froala also comes with several options for editing images and videos. These include:

• Resize, align, or replace images and videos
• Reposition images
• Insert link to an image
• Several image display options: inline or break text
• Add image alt text and caption
• Several image styling options, such as rounded, bordered, or shadowed
• Preview videos directly from the editor’s interface

Can I Add More Features To Froala?

Froala comes with 30+ advanced plugins that allow you to add new features to the editor. Some of the best plugins include:

• Align
• Code view
• Code mirror
• Spell check
• MS Word Paste
• Embedly
• Track changes and many more

Ready to copy and paste content from MS Word to a rich text editor correctly? Sign up for Froala WYSIWYG editor today!