Display the Full TinyMCE Editor In WordPress

Display the Full TinyMCE Editor In WordPress

The WordPress visual editor was given a decent trim in version 3.9. It now has just 14 buttons, or 26 when the kitchen sink is enabled.

It looks great (I love minimalism) but sometimes less isn’t always more. Sometimes more is more. Really, I just want more.

So I set out to enable all of the buttons available in the visual editor.

In today’s Weekend WordPress Project, I’ll show you how to display more than the basic 14 buttons and also how to permanently show the buttons in the kitchen sink.

Feature image
Enable all the hidden buttons in TinyMCE with this Weekend WordPress Project.

Displaying the Full TinyMCE Editor

The visual editor in the most recent version of WordPress displays fewer buttons than previous versions, even with the kitchen sink enabled.

Kitchen sink

To display the full TinyMCE text editor so you have access to all of the advanced features available, add the following code to your functions.php file to enable hidden buttons:

function enable_more_buttons($buttons) {

$buttons[] = 'fontselect';
$buttons[] = 'fontsizeselect';
$buttons[] = 'styleselect';
$buttons[] = 'backcolor';
$buttons[] = 'newdocument';
$buttons[] = 'cut';
$buttons[] = 'copy';
$buttons[] = 'charmap';
$buttons[] = 'hr';
$buttons[] = 'visualaid';

return $buttons;
}
add_filter("mce_buttons_3", "enable_more_buttons”);

To keep the kitchen sink always on, also add this snippet to your functions.php file:

add_filter( 'tiny_mce_before_init', 'myformatTinyMCE' );
function myformatTinyMCE( $in ) {

$in['wordpress_adv_hidden'] = FALSE;

return $in;
}

Your visual editor will now display a third row of buttons:

More buttons

TinyMCE Plugins

If you would rather not mess around with your code in your theme files, there are a few great plugins that add advanced TinyMCE functionality to the visual editor.Other features include graphical image mapping, the ability to create tables using an interface like Microsoft Excel, and a shortcodes manager.

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  • Advanced Editor Tools

    Advanced Editor Tools (formerly TinyMCE Advanced) allows you to add, remove and arrange the buttons in the visual editor. It includes 15 buttons for TinyMCE that are automatically enabled or disabled depending on what buttons are chosen.

    Some of this plugin’s features include support for creating and editing tables, the ability to search and replace in the editor, editing inline CSS styles, and adding and removing HTML tag attributes.

    The plugin also adds a “Classic Paragraph” block for the block editor (Gutenberg).

    Interested in Advanced Editor Tools?

  • WP Edit

    WP Edit provides new buttons, extra options and extended formatting abilities not offered by the existing visual editor in WordPress.

    This plugin allows you to easily insert images, video and clip art, create table via a graphical interface, access shortcodes and insert columns.

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