Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Number of replies: 19

Hi,

I am new to moodle and due to hosting restrictions (MySQL8.0) I am needing to use moddle 4.3.12. I am going through the Moodle Academy and when going to edit a page in a course the toolbar of Tiny MCE is not visible (edit/view/insert/format/tools/tabe/help + buttons below.  This is also the case for editing a text block.

I have checked my preferences and ensured javascript is enabled, Atto Editor is also working fine. One further observation, when I have Tiny MCE selected as preferred and go to edit the page, the page content is showing the html code bracketed around the text (<br> / <ul> / /<li>). With Atto Editor, the view is a standard WYSIWYG).

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Attachment Atto Editor View.png
Attachment Tiny MCE.png
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Héctor Benedicte -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Guy!

It is happening because TinyMCE is disabled in your site. Take a look: https://docs.moodle.org/501/en/TinyMCE_editor#What_is_TinyMCE?

You need to enable it by the setting: Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Text editors > Manage editors.

Greetings smile
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In reply to Héctor Benedicte

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Hi Hector,

Thank you for your response. I checked these before posting and everything looks fine to me. Similarly, I toggled the Editor preference under my Profile (top right). So there must be something obvious elsewhere that I am missing, or am I staring at the solution but cannot see it which is a possibility. Please see screenshots.
 
Thanks again, Guy
Attachment Tiny MCE Enabled 1.png
Attachment Tiny MCE Enabled 2.png
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Héctor Benedicte -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Guy!

That's great. Try to put TinyMCE the first in that list, you know with the arrows.

The order matters here.

You can even disable Atto for a while.
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In reply to Héctor Benedicte

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Hi Hector,

I ordered them previously without any change. Following your advice, disabling Atto unfortunately didn't force any recognition of Tiny MCE. The only result of further "forcing" by disabling the plain editor as well was that I had no Editor Preferences option in my profile (not a surprise really).
Attachment Editor Preferences - User Profile.png
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
It might help to know who you host with. Some hosting providers have ways to change things that are sometimes sort of buried in the capabilities. I ran into the same problem with one of my main development sites just this week at Ionos. I could not directly upgrade the DB, but I was able to export all the data, created another more advance DB using MariaDB, then imported all the data. Seems to have worked perfectly and now to get the time and nerve up enough to go to Moodle 5.0 and then maybe 5.1.
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In reply to AL Rachels

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Morning Al,

Many thanks for your enlightening response, the host is indeed IONOS where my Joomla site is based. With my packaage, I can only go to Maria 10.6 and the V5 series need 10.11 so I think my hands are tied on this one. I will contact them and get their take on this. I will post an update when I get one.

Many thanks again, Guy
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Since you talk of Moodle 4.3, when you say MariaDB 10.6, you mean 10.6.7 or higher, I assume. Ref. https://moodledev.io/general/releases/4.3 > Database requirements. With that you can upgrade to 4.5 LTS, which is still supported. See https://moodledev.io/general/releases.

PHP is a different story. Check that too. There is even a GUI tool in Moodle, Site administration > Server > Environment: Moodle version (drop-down). Or ref. to this chart http://www.syndrega.ch/blog/#php-and-dbms-compatibility-of-major-moodle-releases.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Thank you for your guidance. I will look into this but my first "want" is to have Tiny MCE working.
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
They may related, wrong PHP version, hosting putting restrictions on web server or PHP, etc. Start by checking those things..
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
My hosting company says that I can have Maria 10.6.0 as part of my package, the Moodle instance is on MySQL 8.0.36. and I have PHP 8.2.30 running on the subdomain So I don't think this is the cause.

Is there a really strong reason to upgrade? "Better" isn't really a strong reason however if new versions are covering serious flaws then I will look into it. I am though a teacher and not a tech person so would rather avoid going down a rabbit holle on this.
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hmm, sorry for the delay in answering. I posted before, just as I was quitting for the day, and have been slow about getting caught up and started today. 

Anyway, creating that new MariaDB came up as MariaDB10.11. You might try creating a new DB just to see what it comes up as, since I created this one just last week. If it helps, my account is an, IONOS Unlimited Pro, account. Sadly the "Unlimited" is very misleading, as they DO NOT let me have unlimited file names in use. Just storage space. Since Moodle has gotten so much larger, using many more files, I have had to cut back to only two Moodle's on this account. Luckily, one being for development and the other for plugin demos, I am able to keep the file count just under my limit.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Thank you for the extra information. I have raised a ticket with IONOS and am reluctant to go for an account upgrade as a solution.
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Leon Stringer -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

When TinyMCE is selected as your editor, when you go to page where it does not display (such as when adding/editing a Page) are there any errors in the browser console (for example, Web Console in Firefox)?

Does TinyMCE not display anywhere, or does it work on some pages (for example, the Course summary field in the course settings page)?

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In reply to Leon Stringer

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Tiny MCE is not displaying anywhere that I have seen(courses / blocks). There may be a case of it working but I am new to Moodle so haven't found a screen or function where it does. When Tiny MCE is selected slected as editor the view defaults to what I see when "Plain text area" is chosen as editor. In the console (Chrome) I see the attached issues. The first screenshot is when editing a course and the second is when adding a text block.
Attachment Chrome Console 27012026 (2).png
Attachment Chrome Console 27012026.png
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Leon Stringer -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Those screenshots from your browser console look fine.

The WYSIWYG editors are initially loaded as the plain text field with the HTML as shown in the seconds screenshot in your initial post, then JavaScript should transform this into whichever editor you've selected. So I had wondered if there was a JavaScript error preventing this, but this would be a glaring red error in the console which clearly isn't happening.

Is tinymce.js being loaded when a page that should show the editor loads? If you select the Network tab in your browser's developer tools you can see the files being loaded. With this view open, load/reload the page that should contain the editor and see if you can find this file, it should appear like:

Status 200; Method: GET; File: tinymce.js; Initiator: event.js:3816; Type: js; Transferred: 245.12 kB; Size: 1.17 MB

Also, do you have any additional plugins installed?

Also, are there any errors or warnings on the Environment page?

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In reply to Leon Stringer

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Hi Leon,
In the Network tab, I don't see tinymce.js being loaded. I have installed the "standard" Moodle package from Moodle.Org and so far have configured the Joomdle plugin. In the Environment page, I have rows of ok but also two checks.
Regards, Guy
Attachment Network Check Tiny MCE JS.png
Attachment opcache_check.png
Attachment slasharguments_check.png
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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Leon Stringer -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Is that network trace definitely for a user with TinyMCE selected? Because Atto files are being loaded which should only happen when the Atto editor is in use:

GET theme/yui_combo.php?m/.../atto_accessibilitychecker/; GET theme/yui_combo.php?m/.../atto_html/codemirror/...

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In reply to Guy Emuss

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Ralf Hagemeister -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Guy,

I've encountered this behavior sporadically over the last 20 years.
It manifested as follows - only the text field, like you wrote:

Screenshot%202026-02-14%20163756.png

My solution:
I changed the settings at the bottom from "Moodle-Text-Format" to 
"HTML Format":

Screenshot%202026-02-14%20163805.png

After saving and reopening the page the editor was immediately visible - for ever.

Greetings,
Ralf

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In reply to Ralf Hagemeister

Tiny MCE - Not Visible But Installed

by Guy Emuss -
Hi Ralf,

Thank you for your input. To be honest, I have lost faith in finding a solution to this, and certainly to get any help from the Hosting provider. My solution: I am part way through moving to a VPS with differenct host and upgrading to the latest vesion of Moodle.

Many thanks to you all for your contributions.
Regards,
Guy
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