Product: Nexternal

Article Link: http://help.truecommerce.com/en/articles/4508380-nexternal-how-to-use-and-not-use-wysiwyg-editors

A handy Boolean option in your OMS (Settings / Boolean Options) is called “WYSYWYG Editor”. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors enable you to create web pages without knowing anything about html. They turn plain text into html, so you don’t have to. We recommend that all Nexternal customers turn them on unless they are proficient and prefer working in html.

However, it's important to use the WYSIWYG editors properly, or you’ll likely encounter editing and display oddities!

WYSIWYG editors know how to do only one thing, and one thing only – they turn plain text (meaning just text with absolutely no underlying formatting) into html code. If you put anything but plain text into a WYSIWYG editor, it will gag and sputter and produce unintended and undesirable results – it will make your content harder to modify, and could make an unsightly mess of your online store for some of your customers depending upon the browsers, operating systems and respective versions of each that they are using.

When you copy text from a Word document, or a web page, or an email, or any other digital source – you are not only copying the text that you can see, you are also copying all of the invisible formatting behind it. You should not paste this directly into a WYSIWYG editor, because it is not plain text. So you will need to clean out all that invisible formatting and turn what you’ve copied into plain text, before pasting it into the WYSIWYG editor.

There are several ways to do this, depending upon your operating system, your browser, and respective versions of each.

On a PC:

1. If you are copying from WORD – you can use the “paste from word” icon in the WYSIWYG editor. First, click on the icon:

Then, paste into the window, and leave all the Cleaning boxes checked at the bottom. Click OK.

2. Regardless of where you are copying from, whether it be Word, a web page, an email, or anywhere, you can first paste what you’ve copied into Notepad and turn the copy into plain text within Notepad, then copy from Notepad and paste directly into the WYSIWYG editor.

3. There may be other programs and shortcuts you can use – simply Google it – for example, “how to paste plain text into Firefox (or IE or Chrome or whatever) on a PC”.

On a Mac:

If you are using a Mac, and are using Chrome, Safari or Edge, instead of doing a “paste” into the WYSIWYG editor, simply do a “Paste and Match Style” under Edit. This strips the underlying formatting and pastes the words as plain text.

If you are using a different browser, you'll have to paste the copied text into TextEdit first, then copy from there and paste into the WYSIWG editor.

Now that you know how to use a WYSIWYG editor generally, you can also learn how to insert an image into a WYSIWYG editor.

rev. 10/5/20