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Looks like on August 15, we'll all be forced into the WYSIWYG editor. :(

tzsebe

I noticed an ominous message above my editor box today, "On August 15, your editing experience for card descriptions and comments will be updated." (haha I couldn't paste this in, it kept pasting it to the end of the message - it looks like "paste" doesn't work correctly in this editor - dear me, I hope this bug isn't in the new Trello editor too)

I've been going to trello.com/my/labs and disabling the WYSIWYG editor every time I logged in on a new browser.

I like to use Markdown, but I hate when the editor changes formatting on me as I type. Just let me write my markdown and I'll tell you when I want to preview it!

Will there be a way to get the old mode (or just "disable update as you type" in the new editor), or are we stuck with needlessly-distract-as-you-type mode? I can't be the only one who hates the new experience, but I'm not finding much discussion about it... so maybe I am?

Accepted answers

All comments

Caity

There will not be a way to go back to the old mode after August 15. I know that's disappointing, so I want to share a little more about why we've made this decision.

At this point, very few people are still using the old Markdown editor. For a long time, there wasn't much downside to keeping it around for people who preferred it, so we were happy to leave it as an option. However, that's no longer the case—continuing to support both of these experiences would slow us down—and so we had to make the tough call to remove the old Markdown editor from the small number of people who were still using it.

I know that this isn't the news you were hoping for, but I hope that helps give some context to this decision.

Juan Ochoa_8pflcf

That is good to know up front.

One of the only reasons I have stayed with Trello for so long (basically since the first year of the service) was the markdown mode since I use MD for writing notes practically everywhere. I rarely every use the old M$ editors, or GDocs, or any similar. They slow me way, way down.

Follow-up question:

Is there a bulk download mode for our information? Or is manually copying and deleting our old cards, lists and boards the only way? Thx!

Edit: note that I am looking for a way to download the data and keep the markdown format. The JSON and/or CSV formats would probably require writing a bash script to convert them back to markdown, and that might be too error prone. So, not the path I want to take.

Caity

Hi @Juan Ochoa, we have some more info on exporting from Trello here: https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/exporting-data-from-trello/

Juan Ochoa_8pflcf

Thanks. Looks like it'll have to be the slow slog and manual way then. Luckily I exported and/or deleted over half my boards a couple of years ago. Cheers!

Taco Joe

> At this point, very few people are still using the old Markdown editor. For a long time, there wasn't much downside to keeping it around for people who preferred it, so we were happy to leave it as an option. However, that's no longer the case

Gee, I wonder why, when you force users onto the new experience without asking them and whenever their cookies get reset, then obfuscate how to turn it off.

Taco Joe

and look, not even the atlassian proper WYSIWYG markdown editor works LOL (see how it failed the block quote?)

mnicky

I want to echo Taco's point - the option to keep the old editor was not very visible, so it's understandable that many couldn't find that and are using a new editor.

Even some advanced users at my workplace, for example. E.g., only recently I found one guy that was very frustrated with the new editor and would LOVE to switch to the old one, but he didn't know that it's possible (at least until August 15th).
The switch in labs is pretty decently hidden

So I want to say that the fact that majority of your users use the new editor doesn't mean that they wouldn't use the old one if they knew how to. You should take this into consideration when making decisions.

@Caity On the other hand, couldn't the option to edit raw markdown be added to the new editor? This way, everyone would be satisfied, even the minority of us, Trello's advanced users.

Tyler Johnson_uhg7vn

As Taco Joe points out, this is the result of a user steering dark pattern that isn't about user preference, but about manipulating users into a predetermined choice.

Anthony Smith_qm0hxo

I agree; this was not a preference; it was a forced change with no obvious method of reversion.

The WYSIWYG editor is so bad in Trello I generally can live with them if required, but it seems that Trello has gone down a path with their Wysiwyg to make it as NOT user-friendly as possible, defeating the entire point of them.

Example: (1 of 100's I could give)

In what universe did the Trello developers believe that if I want to copy some data out of a single cell in a spreadsheet and paste it into the description on the card, what I really want is to NOT paste what I copied and instead upload the entire spreadsheet to the card.

Not only is this beyond insane, but it could have GDPR and security implications. What if there is sensitive information in that spreadsheet? Perhaps I wanted to copy and paste a piece of information that was not sensitive, but no one... NO ONE!!! I would expect to upload the spreadsheet upon ctrl+v.

With respect, this decision must have been made by someone who lives in an echo chamber and listens to no one but his or her inner monologue about what a great job he or she is doing.

@Caity if I just keep changing your monthly payment for your phone to a higher price and offering no practical way for you to stop me, I am ok to assume that means you want to pay more?

Please reconsider this and escalate!

Caity

I understand you're really disappointed by this change, and I know that it must feel frustrating that you won't be able to continue to use Trello for your workflow. I've passed along this feedback to the editor team. However, we've made this decision very carefully, and we're fully committed to this change.

Anthony Smith_qm0hxo

@Caity, I find that quite a patronising way of avoiding the real issue and question.

Perhaps you would like to justify your misdirection?

RichardJECooke

How are we supposed to copy markdown into and out of cards with the new editor though? I backup long cards that we use as notes in plaintext, and with the new editor this is going to be impossible.

RichardJECooke

Looks like there is no way to do this. For other people reading this issue (or this one https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-questions/How-can-I-switch-off-the-new-Editor-It-s-catastrophic-in-my-case/qaq-p/2260763) in future, Google Docs has just released proper markdown support. Probably better to switch to that since Trello is killing their support.

Anthony Smith_qm0hxo

They are avoiding the question entirely, though. That is what is going to frustrate people more than anything. If you make a decision, fine, but stand by it and be prepared to justify it.

@Caity just essentially said "sorry not sorry" and avoided the actual question asked all together.

I have raised a bug report anyway, as this is a literal security nightmare, and they are in the firing line for making it possible to accidentally upload sensitive, possibly vulnerable individuals' private information directly onto their servers... GDPR NIGHTMARE!!

Caity

Hi Anthony, I'm not sure what question hasn't been answered yet. I thought that the question in this page was whether Trello would add a way to continue using Markdown, and I've tried to be very clear that, no, we are moving forward with removing the Markdown editor, and we will not be reversing this decision. I wouldn't want to mislead you into thinking otherwise.

I have seen some questions pop up about copying Markdown, so I want to make sure everyone knows that the new editor has a "View Markdown" option to help you copy the raw Markdown if you'd like to copy or move the content out of Trello. Screenshot 2024-07-19 at 10.35.20 AM.png

Although I didn't see any other direct questions about this change, there were some other statements made above that I'm happy to take some time to clarify.

Regarding the behavior you described when copying from a spreadsheet, I agree that isn't how that should work. In fact, that was reported as a bug and fixed last year, and I'm not able to replicate it myself. If you're still seeing it, I would encourage you to file a bug report. However, I don't believe it would be considered to be a GDPR violation, as the attachment could immediately be deleted.

Finally, regarding the suggestion that the only reason so few people are using the new editor is because the only way to turn it off is on the Labs page, this wasn't always the case. Originally, Trello initially included a link in the card description to turn off the new editor. That link wasn't removed until more than 99% of users had switched to using the new editor.

Hopefully all of these points are clear now. I understand that it's disappointing that you won't be able to continue using Markdown, and I hope the "View Markdown" option I shared above will help you with this transition.

RichardJECooke

Thanks @Caity , but there's no way to copy Markdown *into* the textfield anymore is there? The `view markdown` option is readonly.

Anthony Smith_qm0hxo

@Caity, it is disappointing that you need the questions made so direct, but I will do my very best to help.

1. Do you believe that you have accurate desired use statistics on the preference of MD vs WYSIWYG when the mechanism you have clearly said you have used is that you force users onto the new experience without asking them, and whenever their cookies get reset, then obfuscate how to turn it off.

2. If you were truly catering for the end users, why did you remove the link to turn it off link/option? this lasted a very short time, I suspect this is because the lack of takeup did not fit the narrative.

3. Are you confirming that the development of the WYSIWYG editor intentionally upon copying a cell from an external spreadsheet and pasting the cell into the WYSIWYG editor expecting the contents of the cell as text instead uploads a picture of the text/cell content or the entire spreadsheet sometimes at random.

4. This is probably the most important question of all, Are you honestly saying that you had a 99% willing and active user-driven takeup of the WYSIWYG editor? No one was forced into the new editor in any way, shape, or form. This includes simply applying defaults through any mechanism that changed the editor from MD to WYSIWYG on behalf of the user.

Caity

@RichardJECooke That's right, that's a read only panel intended to help people copy out of Trello into another app (for example, we were hearing that people using Trello to draft social media posts needed that ability).

Writing Markdown into the editor should auto-convert into formatted text, although pasting Markdown into the editor does not. Pasting formatted text into the editor, on the other hand, should result in the formatting carrying over.

Correction: Pasting Markdown from a plain text editor will properly convert to formatted text. If pasting from a rich text editor, you'll need to paste without formatting (shift + cmd or ctrl + v) and then click the clipboard icon to choose to paste as Markdown.

Caity

@Anthony Smith For your questions 1, 2, and 4, I've already addressed these, so I won't be repeating my answers here. If there are new questions about how to use the new editor or otherwise adjust to this change, I'm happy to help with those.

For # 3, the expected behavior, which I'm able to reproduce, is that it should copy the text from the cell and not upload an image. If you're seeing something different, submitting a bug report, which it sounds like you've already done, is definitely the way to go.

Anthony Smith_qm0hxo

@Caity Thanks, bug report filed.

As for 1, 2 and 4. No, you have not answered those questions, you have danced around the edge of them.

But I appreciate you probably have some supervisor preventing you from giving direct answers or inhibiting your ability to just be honest, so I won't push you into a difficult position; just again express disappointment and the lack of openness and transparency.

mnicky

@Caity

There's one question of mine that haven't been answered yet, but maybe I was not sufficiently clear so I will try to explain it more

At the beginning you wrote:

> However, that's no longer the case—continuing to support both of these experiences would slow us down—and so we had to make the tough call to remove the old Markdown editor from the small number of people who were still using it.

My question is how should we understand this statement.

One way is that it is a (understandable) waste of resources to support and maintain two editors - the new one alongside the old one.

If this is the case, my question that I posed above is: wouldn't it be possible to incorporate markdown editing into the new editor, so that there's just one codebase etc.?

The other way to interpret your statement, of course, is that it's not so much about two different codebases but about two different ways of text editing, that you have decided not to support. In this case, adding full markdown support to the new editor isn't an option for you (and we'll be sad

Can you clarify this, please?

My interpretation was that you meant the first thing (because the new editor already has some markdown support - namely markdown view and markdown input, and so it shouldn't be much more work to support the full markdown editing - but what do I know). And I hoped that you would consider this...

But now I realized there's also the second possible interpretation.

Caity

Hi @mnicky, happy to try to explain this!

Both of your interpretations are correct—there are separate editors involved and separate ways of formatting text.

If you've use other Atlassian products, you might have noticed that they use a version of the same WYSIWYG editor as Trello. That editor is built to use Atlassian Document Format rather than Markdown.

I know it's disappointing to lose full Markdown support, and I've created a feature request ticket for the team at Atlassian that's responsible for the editor to let them know that there's interest in full Markdown support. To be totally straightforward, I don't think it's likely that they they'd be able to add this in the near future, but it's on their radar.

tzsebe

@Caity Thanks for fielding all the questions.

IMO there absolutely needs to be a way to paste markdown INTO the field. Without that, it doesn't meet the MVP bar.

It's extremely common for me to be writing some notes separately (in notepad or similar), in a markdown-esque format (really just nested bullets), and quickly pasting it into Trello when I'm done. It's just quick and easy to make local edits that way (e.g. if I'm taking notes during a phone call or something).

I guess I can look into using a chrome extension like PasteHuman, but the fact that I have to do that to work around this is really disappointing. This is equivalent to making backwards-incompatible, breaking changes to an API.

Speaking of which, another question: What about writing card descriptions using the API? Will that at least continue to support markdown?

Caity

@tzsebe It should still work when creating card descriptions using the API; I'll confirm this on Monday and follow up.

I was looking into the pasting behavior, and I was incorrect in one of my previous statements—it actually is possible to paste Markdown into the editor and have it format properly, but it depends on what's copied and how.

If you're pasting Markdown from a plain text editor into the Editor, it will convert to formatted text automatically. However, if you've written Markdown in a rich text editor, then it will copy over exactly because it's considered to already be formatted. The workaround for that is to use the option to paste without formatting (e.g., shift + cmd or ctrl + v). A little clipboard icon will show up, and from there you can select whether you want to paste as plain text or as Markdown. It's definitely a bit tedious—if possible, I'd suggest switching to plain text mode in the other app so you don't have to bother with that step.

If that doesn't match what you're seeing, could you please share some more details about where you're copying from so we can troubleshoot?

@RichardJECooke Want to make sure you see this as well as I gave you the wrong information earlier, apologies! Would you please try this out and let me know if it works for you?

Caity

@tzsebe OK, yes, I was able to confirm that Markdown in descriptions added via the API will still format properly.

tzsebe

Thanks for clarifying those things, I'm glad markdown pasting will still work. Not sure I'd I'd continue without it.

Adrian Williams_v6lbqw

This all makes me very sad.
Sad because I don't have the energy to move to another platform.
And sad because I'll probably have to.

Nate Reinar Windwood

@Caity, why would anyone invent their own document format when Markdown (with a few extensions) is already perfect? Did your devs contract the “not invented here” syndrom from Microsoft? Stop mutiplying standards! Also, WYSIWYG is cancer and always leads to shitty code.

Nate Reinar Windwood

I really hope they lose a lot of users from this. Any WYSIWYG sympathizer deserves to go broke.

Brian Schack

I accept your assertion that the majority of users use the WYSIWYG editor. But as others have said, the WYSIWYG editor is the default, and switching to the Markdown editor is difficult (and soon to be impossible).

If you had given us a free and fair choice between editors, then higher usage would indicate our preference. But since you set a default and then enforced it, higher usage indicates your preference.

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