Editing problems
I had lots of problems editing this post about Nestle.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/759035
I wanted to paste a quote from another website. Looked fine in edit. Hit save and instead the post just replicated itself. It copied everying I had already written and duplicated it ... minus the new stuff.
I thought I made an error ... so I tried it again ... about a half dozen times. To eliminate a possible computer problem, I pasted the info into a Word document. Then I pasted into Flickr. Both were fine. Using what was still on my clipboard, I tried once again to paste into Chowhound. Same result ... the post replicated itself and the stuff in my clipboard was not included.
It seems that paste is having some sort of problem The only way I could get rid of the duplicate info was to key something after deleting the bad stuff. Then I had to manually key in the info I wanted to just paste from my clipboard. That worked.
This is really a pain and I don't know if it was a one time thing or a new problem. Anyone else having editing problems when either deleting info or trying to edit and paste additional info?
By rworange
on Jan 12, 2011 08:22 AM
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I haven't run into that problem before. Sounds very unusual. As a work around if you ever run into this again I would copy the quote from the other site into an email form and then email it to yourself. Open that email up and then copy and try pasting that into your post and see what happens.
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I have experienced the duplication when editing a reply, but after saving the edited post, returning to the board and reopening the edited post the duplicated text was not saved. But perhaps that only applies to replies and not to edits on the new topic.
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That's why I tried returning to the board and re-opening, no dice.
Thanks servorg. I don't know if that will work any better than pasting it in word and then recopying, but it is worth a shot.
It is probably some sort of obscure bug that doesn't happen often. However it was so annoying ... I spent 15-20 minutes trying to fix a post that should have taken five minutes ... that I thought I'd note it if anyone else comes across it.
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Tip: When dealing with a flat-text medium like CH discussion boards (and many others), you will avoid all kinds of potential compatibility problems by converting your text into the most basic form. Avoid using Word for this purpose, which itself can create problems.
Instead, first copy your text into a strictly flat-text editor like Microsoft "Notepad." Copy and paste from there into CH. Turn off line wrapping (in Notepad, turn off "Word Wrap" under "Format"). This produces completely basic unformatted text, ".txt" format, what we called ASCII 20 years ago. It is the "lowest common denominator" across all varieties and brands of text media and will copy correctly into essentially anything. It's more direct than mailing to yourself, and more reliable because some people's email settings can themselves introduce formatting, which is what you want to avoid completely. ("Word," by contrast, doesn't even reliably work with other Microsoft tools distributed along with it.)
I've done this for many years, including on Chowhound. Content like foreign words, quoted phrases, unusual names, that I include in CH posts are always handled this way.
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Thanks I'll keep that in mind if I have problems again.
This is the first time I've had problems doing direct cut and pastes either from another website or Word.
I'm blanking on what the term is, but some editors,, like Google maps, will not recognize an edit unless something is actually keyed, even if that means just hitting the space bar. That seemed to be a little of what was happening here. It was not being able to delete the duplicate crud that was a pain. I was on the verge of asking the mods to delete the post because it looked like nonsense when I got it to work ... 300th time's the charm ... I exaggerate, of course ... slightly.
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around that same day I wrote a big post with some inserts and it wouldnt load onto the site - I wound up losing it. So maybe it was a temporary site glitch.
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I concur with eatzalot. The only items I can't copy from Microsoft notepad are Asian language characters. i've been using notepad for years to preview postings. (Also, it usualy helps me proofread then correct my typing errors before posting.)
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I'm seeing a different editing problem that started today. i'll click on the "edit" button and none of the text in the message I want to edit appears. Just a blank dialog box.
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That's happened to me a lot in the past, so its not new. My own theory is that is a disconnect with the server. Just hit cancel and try again. Depending on what's going on, sometimes it takes more than one try.
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You're right, it's not new. However, I have not seen this issue for a while. I tried four times to refresh in three different posts and gave up.
Server disconnect or maybe insufficient servers is a good theory. I'm seeing more error messages on loading in the last few days as well, plus the expanded post issue.
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Yeah, I'm getting lots more expanded posts, especially the long ones.
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