Alternatives to TinyMCE Editor

[Mike Van Vooren]

Have you done any configurations with the existing TinyMCE editor to get additional options?  Or, have you found another editing tool that you have enabled instead of TinyMCE and gotten better formatting options?  Like many of you, we have long struggled with formatting limitations with TinyMCE, especially with content pasted in from external sources like MS Word.  We are hoping that things are better with TinyMCE v5 introduced in Tokyo, but I'm also curious if anyone has swapped it out completely for something different and had a better experience?

Thank you!

[Vickie Runyon]

Are you referring to the pop-up box that lets you control the image source, description, size, etc? I guess I didn't know that was there - or broken - as I've not used it.  I just copy/paste and use the handles if I need to resize.

Or, is there something else you are referring to related to image options?

[Community Alums]

I pasted a link in my reply above, but here's a screenshot circling what was missing.

[Vickie Runyon]

Ok...now I understand. Again, I didn't know that feature was available but in my DEV Utah version, I see all the options! Not available in my PROD Tokyo so we must not be on that patch level. We are upgrading to Utah this week so I'll have them soon.

From my DEV Utah:

[James OBrien]

Michael,

I don't know if you got an answer yet or not.  TinyMCE is the system-wide (instance's) editor.  You may not want to disable or replace it.  There is at least one additional option.

When we've had issues with it we encouraged people to start using the MS Word plugin.  This is easier than expecting contributors to learn HTML and CSS to create an article outside of SN, copy the code, and paste it into TinyMCE using the reveal code option.  The one drawback to the plugin is I think it requires the KM advanced license. 

The plugin allows people to add articles directly to SN using Word 365.  The article is actually saved to SharePoint in the background but it's not obvious to most people.  When you need to edit the article for any reason SN gives you the option to open it in Word (pulls it from SharePoint), edit it, and publish it.  It also allows the contributor to break the connection to Word and use the TinyMCE editor.  You can find the details in the platform documentation. 

One other option is to use the Upload New Version option which allows you to upload a Word document and have it replace any existing content in the article's body.  Images included.  These are the only ways I know of that allow people to create and manage articles without having to use TinyMCE. 

For what it's worth,  I've had good luck with the plugin.

[Mike Van Vooren]

@James OBrien - Thank you for the suggestion.  We have considered the MS Word plugin.  But we can not use it since we are using the "KCS Article" and "FAQ" templates in addition to the "Standard" template.  The plugin only works with the Standard one.  I will make the recommendation we try and keep using the built-in TinyMCE Editor instead of swapping it out for another tool.