Setting and Customizing the Rich Text Field Editor

When it rains it pours… I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to update this as much as I’d like! However, here’s a little tidbit that I struggled with before learning the better way of doing it through Sitecore training: how to make the rich text editor a bit snazzier!

This is well documented in the Sitecore documentation and elsewhere, but I always forget where so this post is definitely for my own benefit (and anyone else like me who doesn’t know where to look right away).

There are two ways of changing around the rich text editor that I’ll cover, I’ll start with the easier one:

1. Setting the source property for the rich text field on your template

I was pretty thrilled to learn this, just go into your content editor or template manager, open up the template with the rich text field that you want to set this for and choose one of the following options as the source (in italics).

Rich Text Default:

/sitecore/system/Settings/Html Editor Profiles/Rich Text Default

This is the default (shocking!) and the control portion looks like the following:

Rich Text Full:

/sitecore/system/Settings/Html Editor Profiles/Rich Text Full

This is a much more filled out editor shown below:

Rich Text Medium:

/sitecore/system/Settings/Html Editor Profiles/Rich Text Medium

This is the middle of the road editor, more than just the default and less than the Full version.

Our next method of changing the rich text editor comes about when the above (or the ones not listed: IDE, Mail) do not meet your needs, or if they Almost do but need to be adjusted.

2. Modifying the default rich text editor

To do this you need to switch to the Core Database – at the bottom right in Desktop view is a little grey icon: click that and choose Core from the popup.

Once the screen refreshes open up the Content Editor and we need to browse to the HTML Editor Profiles (the paths above are where we are going). If you want to change the properties of the default editor for all rich text fields Copy the Rich Text Default and rename it (just in case!) and then you can pick and choose items from the other Profiles – just copy them over to the Rich Text Default item.

As seen on the left there are a number of folders and then sets of toolbars: the toolbars are where the magic is at and the folders contain data that can be displayed and modified.

For example, you can change the inline styles that are available by selecting the inline style item, and then changing the children (or adding new children for your own custom styles).

If you wanted to add Inline styles to your Rich Text Default you can do the following: make sure to copy the Inline Styles folder to Rich Text Default, and then make sure to add the drop down option for css (called Css Class in Toolbar 3 from Full) to the toolbar in Rich Text Default.

Each toolbar is separated by a solid line around it or displayed on a new row on the edit screen and you can add, copy, modify or rearrange items as you wish like any other set of items. They can be deleted as well, so it’s always a good idea to keep a copy of the profile you’re editing if something goes wrong.

I hope that helps anyone else who has wanted to make changes to the default rich text editor and wasn’t sure where to begin!