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In a RTF (rich text field) field I am inserting two anchor tags side by side without having any other characters in between them.

After successfully inserting the two anchor tags, I am unable to insert non hyper linked text between two anchor tags. Any text I do add gets added to one of the existing hyperlinks.

My source tab of Tridion RTF field holds the content as shown below.

<a href="http://www.google.com">Anchor1</a><a href="http://www.Yahoo.co.in">Anchor2</a>

PFA image for Design tab. Design tab of RTF field

How can I solve this issue?

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  • What exactly do you mean with being unable to insert text between them? If I place my cursor between the '1' and the 'A' and start typing it just places the text in between, another option would be to try it in the Source tab between the </a> and <a
    – Bart Koopman
    Feb 25, 2013 at 13:18
  • @bart-koopman Yes I can place cursor and enter text. But that text becomes part of any one of the anchor tag. I need the simple text between the anchor tags. And source tab is disabled for users other than Administrators.
    – P.Muralikrishna
    Feb 25, 2013 at 13:28
  • When I place my cursor between the '1' and the 'A', the text I type does not become part of the link. How is the Source tab disabled exactly?
    – Bart Koopman
    Feb 25, 2013 at 13:40
  • Source tab can be disabled in the Schema Properties for this field.
    – Nuno Linhares ♦
    Feb 25, 2013 at 15:27
  • We also have the component's Source tab, but you wouldn't want authors editing in there in general.
    – Alvin Reyes
    Feb 25, 2013 at 17:13

4 Answers 4

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9

Try adding space between the links when creating them. This will allow you to place text later. I just tried it and worked for me...

Anchor1 Anchor2

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7

I can replicate your issue in FireFox 19.0 (and some earlier versions) using an SDL Tridion 2011 SP1 HR1 environment. Have you tried Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, as for me these do not exhibit the same behaviour?

Sometimes, I can select the second link, cut it to the clipboard, write the text that I want to insert and then paste the link back. This seems to depend on the exact mouse position when I start selecting the second link as sometimes I just end up extending the first link instead. Not a viable workaround really.

I would advise you to contact SDL Tridion support and report this behaviour.

In the meantime, I suggest that you insert a space between the hyperlinks or use an alternative browser.

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  • 2
    +1, SDL R&D has fixed cross-browser issues and differences in the past (e.g. different browsers entered different markup for paragraph tags which was fixed with a rich text filter update). The link behavior is worth reporting to Support. And though there's no official connection to other desktop software, sometimes it helps to explain where the user expectation comes from. For example, Word let's users enter plain text between two side-by-side links.
    – Alvin Reyes
    Feb 26, 2013 at 21:12
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Yes, you are right. I don't think it is possible to do since while inserting the content, the content author should take care of giving space between the two texts before adding the links.

I tried your scenario in couple of ways but no luck.

The only way, which I see is:-

  1. Add the two texts next to each other with a double space (Anchor1[SPACE][SPACE]Anchor2)
  2. Select Anchor1 text
    • Press CTRL+K
    • Enter the link
    • Click OK button
  3. Select Anchor2 text
    • Press CTRL+K
    • Enter the link
    • Click OK button
  4. Now place the cursor in between the two texts and start entering the required content

Hope this will help you.

Alternative, you can write an GUI Extension by which you select two links and click the button it should give two spaces.

Here you might think why I was telling two spaces specifically, since while entering content you need not required to enter any space and you can start typing the content directly.

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  • Yes, entering the space between anchor tags will solve the issue. But I am looking for alternate approach.
    – P.Muralikrishna
    Feb 25, 2013 at 17:27
  • @P.M.Krishna: Alternative approach is to write a GUI extension. As I mentioned in the answer.
    – Siva Charan
    Feb 25, 2013 at 17:29
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I think that Tridion is very similar to lots of other CMS systems in this respect. It is very difficult to anticipate exactly what a content editor wants to do in certain circumstances. For example, if you changed the behavior here (to that you describe) then some content editors would wonder why it doesn't allow you to extend the text used by the first hyperlink.

All online content systems (and offline - things like Microsoft Word) have limitations and I think that this is one (quite rare) scenario where a careful explanation of the technical issue would help the content editors to work around this.

Incidentally, I think that the Stack Exchange sites do a good job with their markdown, but I suspect that if an editor is struggling with two side-by-side hyperlinks, then markdown may be too involved for them.

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