Title: Text Area Formatting Last modified: August 20, 2016 --- # Text Area Formatting * Resolved [ArundelMom](https://wordpress.org/support/users/arundelmom/) * (@arundelmom) * [15 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/) * Data that comes in through Contract Form 7 textarea does not preserve the formatting in the datatable or when viewing using any CFDB commands. For example “Make is new” is translated into this: ‘Make is new’. As well, paragraph returns are missing etc. However, the emails that are generated look fine. Is there a way around these character substitutions? Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 22 total) 1 [2](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/page/2/?output_format=md) [→](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/page/2/?output_format=md) * Plugin Author [Michael Simpson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/msimpson/) * (@msimpson) * [15 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090082) * Regarding link breaks, go to the options page and see “Show line breaks in submitted data table” and set to true. * The other issue is some character set conversion issue. The plugin and its tables in the DB uses UTF-8. But if the submitted form is coming in some other character format you end up with strange characters. I’m not sure how to fix this, but I’ll give you something to check. If you can, have a look at your installation’s wp-config.php file, and see if you have the line: `define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');` It it is something else, you might try changing it and seeing if the form submission comes out OK then. * [Recon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/recon/) * (@recon) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090350) * Regarding the line breaks: * Is there a way to preserve line breaks when outputting data with [cfdb-html]? * Plugin Author [Michael Simpson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/msimpson/) * (@msimpson) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090352) * Wrap it in an HTML PRE tag. * Thread Starter [ArundelMom](https://wordpress.org/support/users/arundelmom/) * (@arundelmom) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090353) * Thanks! * ``` works to preserve the line breaks - but now I don't have text wrapping! I am trying what I can... nothing helps yet... ``` * Plugin Author [Michael Simpson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/msimpson/) * (@msimpson) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090354) * Try this: * 
 *  Thread Starter [ArundelMom](https://wordpress.org/support/users/arundelmom/)
 * (@arundelmom)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090356)
 * Brilliant!!!
    Thank you so much!!!
 *  [Recon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/recon/)
 * (@recon)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090360)
 * Thanks for the reply.
 * Changing the `white-space` value does work, but the resulting line break is bigger
   than the other gaps I have between normal “`
`” paragraphs.
 * Is there any way to split the output into paragraphs at each line break (like
   WordPress does)? As far as I know it isn’t possible to change the size of line
   breaks with CSS — they are always the same size as the text.
 *  Plugin Author [Michael Simpson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/msimpson/)
 * (@msimpson)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090362)
 * CSS line-height Property might help
 *  [Recon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/recon/)
 * (@recon)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090373)
 * I have already set the line-height for the page (so the line-height for lines
   with text is correct). The problem is that the spacing between paragraphs is 
   smaller than an entire empty line.
 * WordPress automatically wraps sections of text separated by a line break into`
   
` tags. Can this plugin do the same?
 * This might not be possible, but it’d be great if it was 🙂
 *  Plugin Author [Michael Simpson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/msimpson/)
 * (@msimpson)
 * [14 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090376)
 * I see. The plugin is actually specifically stripping out WP’s injected BR and
   P tags ([wpautop](http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wpautop)). The
   issue is that people want to use [cfdb-html] with their own markup, but then 
   WP comes along and injects unwanted tags in that.
 * So I when ahead and coded in an option to turn this back on. To try it, download
   the development version and add `wpautop="true"` to your short code. Please let
   me know how that works for you.
 *  [Recon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/recon/)
 * (@recon)
 * [14 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090390)
 * Thanks, I will give this a try next week and let you know.
 *  [Recon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/recon/)
 * (@recon)
 * [14 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090396)
 * I’ve installed v1.8.7 and have added `wpautop="true"` to the `[cfdb-html]` shortcode,
   but line breaks in form data are still not being wrapped in `p` or `br` tags.
   Am I missing something?
 *  Plugin Author [Michael Simpson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/msimpson/)
 * (@msimpson)
 * [14 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090397)
 * Try it with “false”. I think I reversed it my mistake in the code.
 *  [Recon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/recon/)
 * (@recon)
 * [14 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090398)
 * Nope, still no change with it set to “false”.
 *  [Recon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/recon/)
 * (@recon)
 * [14 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/#post-2090403)
 * Is this feature still in the development version?
 * I have just downloaded it again and I’m still unable to make this work. I have
   tried setting `wpautop` to `true` and `false`. The line breaks appear correctly
   in the backend table view, but they disappear when I use the `[cfdb-html]` shortcode.
 * Sorry to bug you again but I have no idea why this isn’t working for me.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 22 total)

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 * Last activity: [14 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/text-area-formatting/page/2/#post-2090410)
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