Hi all,  (and hopefully Jon)

I've been having a strange problem with my portal that I've been unable to fix. I've posted a few times in other forums and haven't had any luck. There's a chance it may have something to do with the text editor, but I don't even know how to begin to trace it.

This is what happens:

• Normally, all users on my portal have the editor set to rich text - no one uses plain text mode.
• The user will sign in, edit a module that uses the text editor and the editor will all of a sudden be plain text mode.
• Usually, the user can tick the radio button to change back to rich text and it will stay that way.
• If the user then signs out and back in, the setting will often have reverted back to plain text.
• In one case, with the FAQ module, the setting always reverts to text every time the module is edited.
• In another case, with Mandep's CSS tabs module, the setting even reverts back to plain text immediately, in full view of the user.
• This only happens occasionally and affects apparently random users.
• Other users with the same edit permissions will sign in and all modules will behave just fine.

Locopon from the FCK project has given me this information that may relate: 

"There is a DNN feature called personalization. This allows the system to save custom properties as per user. Somehow the user activated the named property related to basic/rich mode. Many modules out there don't use the controls/texteditor.ascx and re-create the same functionality on its own interface. Most of them use the same property name for personalization."

Following that, I examined the db and found a table called Profile that contains the following:

<profile><item key="DotNetNuke.TextEditor:PreferredTextEditor" type="System.String, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"><string>RICH</string></item></profile>

The red bit is what keeps getting changed from Rich to Basic all by itself.

My question is: Given what I know, how do I even begin to trace what is causing this?

The best clue I have is the case where for one specific module, upon ticking the rich text radio button, the setting immediately reverts back to text in plain sight. But I don't know how to use that clue.

I'm really getting desparate for some help with this one.

The portal is 4.6.2

Rob

Hi Mitch, thanks for the reply.

The problem is that I really don't know how to watch the database and do that. I did refresh the table view in the enterprise manager that my host provides and was able to see it change, but there isn't really any trigger for it, other than simply going into the editor mode.  Hmm, I guess that's the trigger.. editing the module?  The browser and OS make no difference to the issue - I've tried Firefox and IE6/7 and XP, Vista and OSX.

I've just spent the afternoon creating accounts and pages and adding modules to try and narrow down what is happening.

The CSS Tabs module is the one that lets me test for it easiest because it switches immediately back to the opposite editor mode as soon as one tries to change modes. Naturally, no other modules are present on the page when any of the modules is in edit mode.

I think I've discovered that the problem is not that it reverts to plain text mode, but simply that it reverts. I now have one portal with one user where the module is stuck in rich text mode and another portal with another user where the CSS Tabs module is stuck in plain text mode. Other modules such as the Text/HTML are also affected in the same manner.

It seems like particular portals are affected.. almost like they catch an illness. Other virtually identical portals remain unaffected. It looks to me like the editor within the modules is responding to the personalization setting in the db, and that something else keeps forcing that setting back to one way or the other.

I'm a little suspicious that the editor might be receiving conflicting personalization settings when user accounts exist in more than one portal - some of my users have more than one portal and most of them also have a matching account in the top-level portal for support purposes. Could that be a problem? I've been trying to test for that, but haven't been able to confirm it.

If I knew more about what affects the personalization settings and when and how it happens, I'm sure I'd be on the right track. I'm reaching a point where I'd be prepared to pay something to have this fixed. It's wrecking all my plans... anyone? Help? eek!

Rob