2017 Text Editing Is Useless!

[Anonymous]

When I first heard that Revit 2017 included a new and improved text editor, I was pretty excited as I'm sure many others were. However after actually using it, my views on it have drastically changed. 

This is THE WORST text editor I have ever used in any program!

- You can't copy and paste text from other program such as MS Word or One Note. I have to first open 2016. Paste the text in there then copy it and paste into 2017. 

- After you fight for an hour to get the formatting of your notes in a way that works (not the way you want because Revit can't do that) it completely changes the moment you click outside of the text box. 

- When I select a textbox, highlight the text i wish to change and start typing, nothing happens... I mean it just stays as if I never started typing. This happens about 75% of the time intermittently. 

- If I changes the bullet style for an indented section, it will often change the bullet style for everything above it as well and screw up all my indents.

- The spaces between the bullet and text are unnecessarily large and cant be changed.

- You can't insert a blank line in between paragraphs.

- If you, heaven forbid, change the size of your text box after formatting it will completely ruin all your formatting putting overflow text on new bullet-ed lines like they are a completely new sentence. 

- If your sentence does not fit all on the same line it will wrap to the next line but completely ignore any indenting from the line it started from. 

How is this an improvement?!? It just took me 3 hours to get notes for a Door Schedule into my project. I'd rather have the old text editor where I just fake the formatting with tabs and spaces. 

Am I don't something wrong here? How does Autodesk think this actually works? 

[ToanDN]

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@Akralkay wrote:

When I first heard that Revit 2017 included a new and improved text editor, I was pretty excited as I'm sure many others were. However after actually using it, my views on it have drastically changed. 

This is THE WORST text editor I have ever used in any program!

- You can't copy and paste text from other program such as MS Word or One Note. I have to first open 2016. Paste the text in there then copy it and paste into 2017.
Yes you can.  Highlight and copyclip text from any other program, create a text in Revit, pasteclip within the text editing window.  I just did it with your post.
 

- After you fight for an hour to get the formatting of your notes in a way that works (not the way you want because Revit can't do that) it completely changes the moment you click outside of the text box.
It happens in all previous versions, but never in 2017 for me.
 

- When I select a textbox, highlight the text i wish to change and start typing, nothing happens... I mean it just stays as if I never started typing. This happens about 75% of the time intermittently.

Can't replicate that.  Not to say it does not happen.

- If I changes the bullet style for an indented section, it will often change the bullet style for everything above it as well and screw up all my indents.

Highlight only the section you wish to change bullet style before changing it.  I just did with the example below. Changing one bullet style did not affect the other.

- The spaces between the bullet and text are unnecessarily large and cant be changed.

It is controlled by the tab size under text type definition.  See how small the spaces below are?

- You can't insert a blank line in between paragraphs.

SHIFT + ENTER

- If you, heaven forbid, change the size of your text box after formatting it will completely ruin all your formatting putting overflow text on new bullet-ed lines like they are a completely new sentence.
If the text is improperly formatted, such as using a bunch of spaces to bring the text down to another line instead of using SHIFT+Enter or Enter, or use TAB to indent individual lines of text then it may happen.  But if the text is properly formatted in the first place, without fore mentioned manipulations, it should not happen.
 

- If your sentence does not fit all on the same line it will wrap to the next line but completely ignore any indenting from the line it started from. 

This is true.

How is this an improvement?!? It just took me 3 hours to get notes for a Door Schedule into my project. I'd rather have the old text editor where I just fake the formatting with tabs and spaces. 

If you bring in an old text from a previous version with a lot of fake formatting into 2017, you will have all the headaches above.  If I had to, I would clean the format via Notepad or similar and reformat it from scratch.

Am I don't something wrong here? How does Autodesk think this actually works? 

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[Anonymous]

Hi ToanDN,

Thanks for the reply and suggestions. I don't know if there is something wrong with my version of Revit but none of the procedures you mention work for me. Except for SHIFT+ENTER. That works. 

Pasting into Revit simply doesn't work consistently for me. All previous versions this worked every time. Not 2017. 

Changing the bullet style of highlighted text still affects text not highlighted. 

I should clarify the tab spacing... It is not the spacing when using the TAB button that I have issue with. It's the spacing after the bullet point. Most other text programs this is smaller than a full TAB space. 

Regarding the formatting change after modifying the text box size. I used only indenting and bullets in Revit but still have my same issue. Your suggestion did not work for me unfortunately. 

The text I brought into 2017 was unformated. Just punctuation. It was still a nightmare to work with. Regardless of the formatting issues, not being able to consistently highlight and replace text by typing new is a deal breaker on its own. Every single program that uses text uses this procedure. There is no workaround. 

I just wanted to bring this to Autodesk's attention. It seems that every time a "new" or "improved" feature is added it works worse than the solution it was meant to replace. I'm not terribly interested in jumping through a bunch of hoops to fix this either. This will be the last project I do in 2017 and will be going back to 2016 after this. If Revit had any form of backwards compatibility I would have switched back long ago. I am very disappointed with the 2017 line of software. I've had many issues with ACAD 2017 as well. 

[ToanDN]

If you can copy and paste the text to a notepad txt file, or directly to the reply, then I can see if it is the text itself or Revit causing the problems.

[Anonymous]

It seems to have something to do with the program it is copied from. One Note doesn't work at all. Occasionally I have trouble when copying from MS Word. Notepad seems to work fine. I can't even copy the text from One Note to Notepad and then copy and paste it into Revit from there. But not directly from One Note. 

However, i can use any program and copy the text perfectly fine into Revit 2016 or previous...

[Anonymous]

Did you resolve this problem somehow? I am finding the same thing.  I often have to copy multiple text from excel to revit.  addons have too many issues. I can't believe that they have messed this up, it's like they hate Excel or something.

[Anonymous]

If by resolve you mean abandon 2017 and go back the 2016 then yes lol. I haven't seen any acknowledgment from Autodesk about this issue so I highly doubt they will fix it. Best we can hope for is they do something about it in 2018. I wouldn't hold your breath though.  

[Base12]

So anyone who paid for the 2017 maintenance will get a credit toward 2018? Right?  I mean come on, Autodesk you totally blew it with this release and we've fought and struggled all year spending countless hours trying to overcome the errors in the programming of 2017.  How can you charge full price for this with a straight face?

[mike]

- When I select a textbox, highlight the text i wish to change and start typing, nothing happens... I mean it just stays as if I never started typing. This happens about 75% of the time intermittently.

Can't replicate that.  Not to say it does not happen.

This definitely happens and still remains in the Revit 18.1 release. If you highlight text and start typing, nothing happens until you move your mouse. You have to highlight the text then move the mouse prior to typing the replacement text. VERY FRUSTRATING!!!

Not sure why Auodesk decided to change from a perfectly fine text editor in Revit 16. Stop changing for the sake of change! We shouldn't have to put up with this considering the amount of money we pay for this product.

[jacques]

We are experiencing very similar problems. Text on Excel will not paste onto Revit and when working on the text, curser is nonresponsive until you over correct (at which point you have to type again) This happens when trying to delete a gap between two words that originally started as a separate column in Excel but notepad converted in a TAB space.

Can someone at Autodesk look into this? This worked much better on 2016.

[RobDraw]

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@Akralkay wrote:

When I first heard that Revit 2017 included a new and improved text editor, I was pretty excited as I'm sure many others were. However after actually using it, my views on it have drastically changed. 

This is THE WORST text editor I have ever used in any program!

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Useless is a wild exaggeration. 

So, we finally get some new features and some bugs need to be fixed but people feel the need to go off the deep end. This kind of thing is not uncommon when new features come out. How long have we been waiting for improvements to the text editor? If it were easy to do, would this conversation even be happening?

2018 has been out for a while now but no one is mentioning if there were any improvements.

[jacques]

Ahhh.... improvements? I didn't know anything was wrong on 2016 As to 2018... I'll hold off updating to 2018 until the last possible time.

[Anonymous]

No, useless is exactly the right word. 

By the way, we are STILL waiting for actual improvements. Just because Autodesk changes something doesn't mean it's an improvement. It's not like they took what was working perfectly from 2016 and added features. They completely changed the way it works and ruined it! 

Also, the new text editor was released with Revit 2017 which was launched in the spring of 2016. We are now in the fall of 2017 and an entire new release later yet the issues still persist. This should have been fixed over a year ago. This is not a NEW feature. There should be no bugs with it whatsoever. It's a text editor for christs sake! How hard is it to get that right?!?

[RobDraw]

You do realize this is a user forum and people come here for solutions. Maybe you could post your "suggestions" over in the ideas forum.

[Anonymous]

This thread was started a year ago... This was one of the few places that Autodesk actually looked at and read things. The "suggestions" forum is nothing more than a graveyard for ideas. 

I wasn't really looking for a solution anyway. I'm simply trying to bring attention to a problem. The amount of views this thread is generating and the fact that people are still posting to it a year later shows that it is working to some extent. I know **** well Autodesk won't do a thing about it, just like they haven't with any other issue since the day they purchased Revit. 

[dgorsman]

@RobDraw @Anonymous - I know it's difficult but please: just walk away at this point.  Your respective points have been made, further posts won't help much.

[RobDraw]

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@dgorsman wrote:

@RobDraw - I know it's difficult but please: just walk away at this point.  Your respective points have been made, further posts won't help much.

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But I just got here and I like stirring the pot when it comes to over the top complaints that bash AutoDesk. Sorry, but, with all due respect, your request is denied.

[hstaabprime]

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@Akralkay wrote:

- When I select a textbox, highlight the text i wish to change and start typing, nothing happens... I mean it just stays as if I never started typing. This happens about 75% of the time intermittently.  

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Just want to note that I experience this often.

[mike]

Useless is a wild exaggeration. 

So, we finally get some new features and some bugs need to be fixed but people feel the need to go off the deep end. This kind of thing is not uncommon when new features come out. How long have we been waiting for improvements to the text editor? If it were easy to do, would this conversation even be happening?

2018 has been out for a while now but no one is mentioning if there were any improvements

Don't you realise that we actually pay Autodesk to provide us a product. Not be guinea pigs in the progression of their product. Can you image if any other company in the world did the same thing. Car companies releasing cars on the basis that they were going to trial a new brake system!! No-one would except that, but when it comes to software it seems to be a nationwide thing that everyone accepts.

We buy a product, at a large cost and expect it to work. I don't think that this is much to ask for, especially when they had product with features that worked fine.

[RobDraw]

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@mike wrote:

Don't you realise that we actually pay Autodesk to provide us a product. Not be guinea pigs in the progression of their product. Can you image if any other company in the world did the same thing. Car companies releasing cars on the basis that they were going to trial a new brake system!! No-one would except that, but when it comes to software it seems to be a nationwide thing that everyone accepts.

We buy a product, at a large cost and expect it to work. I don't think that this is much to ask for, especially when they had product with features that worked fine.

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Really, that has nothing to do with my comment on someone calling it useless and using this forum for complaining. Break systems are not a feature. I'd be willing to bet that not every car that had anti-lock brakes had the anti-lock mechanism work as designed for every situation.

A buggy text editor is an inconvenience at best. Revit, or AutoCAD for that matter, have been slow to upgrade these features throughout the years and when they do, they don't always work as expected.

IME, the only difficulty that I've had is the typing without anything happening and I'm pretty sure that has been fixed in an update since it hasn't happened to me in a while. Either that or I'm more conscious of my cursor location. The others just aren't happening or nobody in my office uses them. So, guess what. It is not useless.