Visual Editor not showing

I had clean new install no plugins or other themes installed and the same problem.

I compared 2 different sites’ tables. One site with a working Visual Editor (and updated to new WP version) and the new one not.

In table <usermeta> of the “working site” I found record <rich_editing = true> for my user id.
The new site did not have that one. After adding that record into the table the visual editor started showing up again.

umeta_id > [new number]
user_id > [my user id]
meta_key > “rich_editing”
meta_value > “true”

INSERT INTO [TABLEPREFIX]_usermeta (umeta_id, user_id, meta_key, meta_value) VALUES (NULL, ‘[YOUR_ID]’, ‘rich_editing’, ‘true’);

So I hope that might work out for you too.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by temmes.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by temmes.

I have the same problem: Visual Editor not showing. i’ve tried all things but not successful.

Please, help!

INSERT INTO [TABLEPREFIX]_usermeta (umeta_id, user_id, meta_key, meta_value) VALUES (NULL, ‘[YOUR_ID]’, ‘rich_editing’, ‘true’);

This is working for me just open your admin pannel and in the user_meta table just update the rich_editing true for the user you want to enable visual editor.

I’ve just had the same problem come up for me but with 90+ authors/editors/admins all suddenly seeing no editor. Coincidentally we’d just activated CloudFront and after stepping over a few possible things like cross-origin and missing JS I chose to trace the code and found the problem.

Turns out the problem was down to the UserAgent string being sent to WordPress by CloudFront. If WP doesn’t recognise the string you don’t get a fancy editor. We modified CloudFront such that the UA for admins would be untouched and everything came back. The other option would be a plugin that does the following:

add_filter( 'user_can_richedit', function( $wp_rich_edit ) {
    if ( !$wp_rich_edit
         && ( get_user_option( 'rich_editing' ) == 'true' || !is_user_logged_in() )
         && isset( $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_USER_AGENT' ] )
         && stripos( $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_USER_AGENT' ], 'amazon cloudfront' ) !== false
    ) {
        return true;
    }

    return $wp_rich_edit;
} );

From the sound of things the first poster’s problem machine may have a firewall/privacy/av app that’s modifying the UserAgent so you could take the above code and change the “amazon cloudfront” string to match part of your UA and all should be well.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Spectacula.

To keep it simple I had these symptoms too..

In the “Users/Your Profile” area
I just made sure my user fields like ‘nickname’ and first and last name.. were filled out. I also ‘checked’ ~ Disable the visual editor when writing.. and saved the user profile. Then I ‘un-checked’ ~ Disable the visual editor when writing.. and saved again.

This fixed the issue.. hope this helps someone.
John

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by studioactiv8.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by studioactiv8.

Just created an account to say that @spectacula is 100% right.

The issue comes from the ‘user_can_richedit’ check.

Even if the value is set to true in the user profile or database, WordPress will ignore it based on the user agent string (and probably lots of other undocumented cases).

The solution is to add a filter function in wp-config.php like the example @spectacula posted.

Thanks!