We updated to Vancouver and now when I edit a KB, extra junk html is added into the Source Code.

[trout1974]

When I put a hard space (hold shift down and press Enter) extra html is added into the source code. I like to keep the source code clean, because we do manage the html, so we use html and the gui side of SN to create kbs. We use the hard space between each step when writing out steps in articles, and we use a hard space above and below images. So we have tons of junk html with each hard space we use.
I have worked at other companies in Vancouver and never had this issue. 
SN says it is an issue with the TinyMCE Library and refused to fix the issue, and pretty much told me it can't be fixed. In my opinion, this is not how a company should support their customers, close their ticket and not resolve the issue. 
I have attached an image of the source code and highlighted the junk that was added when I put in the hard spaces. 
If anyone has any information or advise, I greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

[Mike Van Vooren]

Hi Kristin and @Dr Evil .  We have had our share of discussions with Support on this topic also and ultimately coming to the same conclusion.  In addition to the general formatting issues for standard knowledge articles, we are also using the Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) module.  We are using the Policy Editior (also same TinyMCE editor) to publish policy docs, which were all created in Word and converted to PDF.  However, we must upload a Word version into the Editor which carries all the junk HTML along with it.  It is extremely frustrating for the GRC team to do all this rework to try and fix the formatting of their Policies to match the originals.  It does not seem like SN is interested in providing any of the available formatting plugins available directly from TinyMCE that might help us.

We are doing the same as many of you to try and clean the HTML output from Word first, then copy and paste that into the Policy Editor.  From what I have read, Word-to-HTML conversions have never been clean.  We were trying to test 3rd party HTML cleaning apps since I don't think our Security team will like us using web-based tools.  But, the least bad option ended up being doing a Save As from Word and choosing "Web Page, Filtered (*.htm, *.html)".  We took the HTML output from that and it retained the formatting better.  Hopefully that helps others.

[Dr Evil]

I can see that helping when copy and pasting from word, to limit the word junk HTML. It has added random code for a years, from my experience in SN and other knowledge platforms. 

What instance of SN are you running (Vancouver, Washington)? 

Are you getting for example the "--sn-tinymce_content-background" like in the attached image?

The reason I ask is because this new code is appearing in existing KBAs that are 1 year old (several versions published) or more randomly when just using the editor. 

[Tom_T]

I followed some advice in another discussion here in the forum:

1. Save all graphics/photos/visuals (NOT EMBED ANYTHING!!!!!!)
   
   
2. Copy the text in to Editor.EXE to get rid of all formating and hidden word extras
   
   
3. Create a new, empty  and clean Word docx file
   
   
4. Paste the text back from the Editor.exe to your new Word docx
5. Format in Word - use the standard headers, use 'circles' for bullet-points
   Standard bullet points do NOT work, SNOW tells you otherwise in their Product Documentation. But what they say about bullets is NOT true to my experience.
   
   
6. You have to manually rebuild any table - my advise: do only use borderless tables. My experience with tables and borders was horrible, especially when tabels expand a single page. 
   Please note as well: if you use page format A4 - you will have issues. The import functionality does only work properly with US letter format word docs. It ignores A4 and treats it as US letter - so you will strange and unexpected page formatting issues implemented in your import.
   
   
7. Add the pictures to your Word docx by inserting (NOT embedding!)

I have choosen this way instead of uploading all teh graphics/photos/visuals to SNOW because of the fact that SNOW wants you to do the red-lining process outside of SNOW. But this is no use if you have manually re-work the upload after each update and re-assign all the the stuff. We do need a version to edit that can be uploaded afterwards.

Depending on your documents this will be a few minutes of work or quite a significant amount of time. But this has prooven to be valuable and the documents look pretty good afterwards. Even though there are still some unexplained formatting issues. But we are up to 95% of accuracy that way.

But if somebody from SNOW Dev team is reading this: the functionality is still highly unsatisfying and buggy - please do fix this, for the Washington release too!

[Dr Evil]

Thanks Tom_T that is some good information and context. We are on Washington too and we are experience the junk HTML inserted on existing KBAs and I'm wondering if you are also seeing this? 

Also I've never used Editor.exe, I do all my editing and remove formatting with Notepad++ (Windows). Is there any advantages using editor.exe?  

We are a couple of months away from upgrading to Xanadu, but I doubt this is fixed there either. 

[Tom_T]

No matter what - as long as you will use a plain text editor - it will be fine IMHO. So Notepad should work as well.