Task:
In today’s exercise, the task is to copy three links that are listed in a Google Document that’s used to collaborate on show notes for a podcast and paste them into a List Block.
Expectation:
After I create a list block in WordPress, I’ll copy the links in the Google Document and paste them into the list block. I expect that all three URLs will show up in the block as a list.
What Actually Happens:
When I paste the three URLs from Google Documents into the List block, the List block is transformed into three-paragraph blocks. I have no idea why it does this but it’s not the only block where pasting content into it causes it to transform into one or more paragraph blocks.
The Block Way
The Block way of successfully completing this task is to paste the URLs into the List block, select all three-paragraph blocks and transform them back into a List block. It’s an unnecessary cycle.
The Lesson:
Most of the gripes I have with writing in the WordPress editor, especially when it comes to copying and pasting content into blocks is the flow. I expect to copy and paste something into a block and continue on my way but when the block I wanted suddenly transforms into a different block, I have to stop what I’m doing and figure out what the hell is going on.
There’s the way I write and craft content in WordPress and then there’s the way the editor wants me to do it. I’m consistently battling the editor’s way. I don’t think the editor’s way of doing things that makes a writer go in a circle to accomplish a task like what I described above is an ideal flow for anyone. If the editor could eliminate transforming blocks from what I want back into a paragraph block, I’d have a better time.
Did your Google document have the URLs in a list format, or in paragraph format?
Paragraphs, but you bring up an interesting point. I’m going to try some things now.
As far as I know, cutting and pasting tries to preserve formatting. So if text is in a list on the original, Gutenberg should carry that over.
But it also makes sense that if you created a list block, your pasted content would respect it.
Ok, I tried turning the links in the Google Doc into a bulleted list, copying them, then pasting them into a List Block and they get turned into three separate paragraph blocks. I also tried copying the bulleted list in the Google Doc and pasting it into the editor and it did the same thing. I was kind of hoping that it would have detected and created a list block for me for the bulleted items but oh well. Thanks for the idea though.
That’s a bummer! I just tried the same thing and got that result as well.
Now, I tried writing in Word and pasting, and it worked perfectly. Weird.
Apparently there are tools to help with this:
https://kinsta.com/blog/google-docs-to-wordpress/