‘Select all’ snafu
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Hello
First off, I’m a technoramus … so you know … and work with the Classic editor.
In the past, I’ve been able to add content from outside, then use Control + A to cover the full page. I then modify as desired – everything bold and italicized – hit Update, and Bob’s your uncle.
Now, when I use Control + A, the cursor shifts to the bottom of the page, and the content is surrounded by a blue box, not covered in blue, indicating what’s being modified, and the Classic dashboard goes missing.
Little help?
Much obliged
The site I need help with is solastcentury.wordpress.com.
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Hi, can you let us know which page you’re pressing control A on so we have a better idea of what you’re seeing? I think it’s been a while since the classic editor was updated.
Also, can you clarify this?
and the Classic dashboard goes missing.
Lastly, if you don’t mind getting a screen capture or two of what you’re seeing, that will help. Here’s how; more context is better so try not to crop it too tight:
https://wordpress.com/support/make-a-screenshot/And you can upload it here on the affected site: https://wordpress.com/media
Then update us here. Thanks!
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Hello supernova
The pages are at
https://wordpress.com/post/solastcentury.wordpress.com/240 and
https://wordpress.com/post/solastcentury.wordpress.com/38.By “dashboard”, I mean the bar that gives you options for “Paragraph”
and various heading sizes, bold, italics, bulleted lists et alia, that
appears just below the page title.I’m sorry, but producing a screenshot’s beyond my pay grade.
So, as you see, these are lists of audio files, and there’s no problem
adding one – the “dashboard” remains and I can make the text bold and
italicized, but when I try to do so for the entire page, because
occasionally I’ll see an entry that is no longer in bold print or
italics (and I have no idea why that occurs), trying select all the
text via Control + A disappears the “dashboard”, and I see instead a
shorter bar with a keyboard icon, “Convert to blocks, and three
vertical dots revealing various options when I click on that.This shorter bar is there along with the longer one initially, but
after trying to modify all text, only it remains, and the whole of the
text is outlined in blue, rather than highlighted, at which point I’m
flummoxed.I hope that’s clear.
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Okay, so first, you’re not using the classic editor on those pages. The links you gave are for the block editor, and you’re using the classic block inside it. That’s all good – that’s what we recommend, as the full classic editor will go away eventually, but the classic block which mimics how it works should be around for a while still.
https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/classic-block/
The thing you refer to as “dashboard” is the classic editor toolbar – in WordPress, “dashboard” is used to refer to the admin area itself at My Site, which is why my colleague wasn’t clear on what you were speaking about :)
The shorter bar you see is the block settings for the specific block – if you used a paragraph block instead of the classic block, for example, that’s where you’ll find your formatting options. For the classic block those settings are minimal, as the block includes the classic editor toolbar within the block itself.
As for the issue you describe, I’m not able to reproduce it on my end – if I try selecting all inside the classic block it selects all text, but the editor toolbar remains visible to me.
At first I thought it might be that it’s selecting content from multiple blocks, taking the focus away from the classic block, but if I press Ctrl-A it only selects the contents of the classic block as expected, so that’s not the problem.
That leaves your browser as the most likely culprit.
Please visit http://supportdetails.com/ and note down your browser name and version number for me. Can you also tell me what version of Windows you’re using? With those details we can then see if we’re able to reproduce the issue using the same setup as you have at the moment.
On your end, can you also please check if clearing the browser cache makes any difference? And if possible, check if the same thing happens if you use a different browser.
https://wordpress.com/support/browser-issues/#clearing-your-browser-cache
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Hello kokkieh
Support Details asks for the recipient’s email, which I don’t have.
My browser is Chrome 91; I’m using Windows 10 21H1.
Clearing cache accomplished zip, but switching to Firefox allowed me to do my deed. However, I really don’t want to have to change browsers every time I update.
I actually did update one of the pages in question last night – not sure how – but I wasn’t able to replicate it with the other.
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Clearing cache accomplished zip, but switching to Firefox allowed me to do my deed. However, I really don’t want to have to change browsers every time I update.
I use Chrome (on Mac OS) without any issue, so I would check your Chrome security settings to make sure you’re not restricting third party cookies too much. You can add an exception for
[*.]wordpress.comin the “Sites that can always use cookies” section as well to see if that might fix this problem.Let us know if you still have trouble!
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Hello csonnek
I’m not blocking third party cookies, other than in incognito. I added WordPress.com to the “always use cookies” list, but it didn’t have any effect.
I checked the box for “including third-party cookies on this site” – yes?
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That should do it if it was a cookie issue.
I’m not sure this will help, but want to rule it out first before we start digging in. Could you log out of your WordPress.com account and log back in and confirm if that has any impact? I’m not confident that it will, but want to rule out an expired login cookie first.
Let us know how that goes!
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Nada
I was hopeful it might, as I had to log in with Firefox, and it did work there, but bupkis rules once more …
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So, I went to page 38, and tried Control + A, and I was able to select all text, but it won’t work on page 240; I get the blue outline around the text, and no Classic toolbar.
A clue, my dear Watson … ?
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Okay, I got the bright idea to just create another post with the content from 240, and see what happens.
No worries on the new page, so we’re good, but if you want to investigate for your own edification, I’ll leave 240 up. I’d be curious to know what you find, but if you aren’t keen on that, let me know, and I’ll flush it.
Thanks for your help here
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Hm, this is odd. We’ll do some digging, but I’m glad to hear it somehow worked anyway as a new page. :)
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False alarm
I give up
If you can fix it, fine; otherwise, I’m gonna find a blog platform that caters to technorami such as I.
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So, I went here
https://www.wikihow.com/Select-All#On-Windows
Tried the third option – right clicking on the mouse to “Select all”
And the goddamn thing worked.
Heaven and earth, Horatio, and tomorrow never knows, but fingers, toes and eyes crossed …
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Well, I’d be curious to know just *why* it worked, and why there was a problem in the first place, if you’re up for some detective work.
If not, I will proceed on my blissfully ignorant way …
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I tried testing this in Chrome 91 on Windows 10, using both your content and my own, and I just don’t get the same problem of the toolbar disappearing when I press Ctrl-A to select all content inside the classic block.
So I’m afraid I don’t know why it’s happening for you – it’s almost definitely something specific to your browser, but no way to tell what without access to your computer itself.
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Mystery in the machine … thanks for trying.
Any idea why right clicking the mouse for “Select all” does work?
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