Update 14Oct2020: Oh, dear. My environment has been reverted from ‘classic’ to ‘block’ again. I guess what the ‘Happiness Engineer’ did back in August didn’t stick. *sigh*
Update 21Aug2020: Something’s broken. The advice I give below no longer works. I got in touch with a Happiness Engineer via https://wordpress.com/help/contact and they say that the classic editor is now ‘deprecated’. But: they’ve fixed it for me. You can try contacting them yourself, and ask that they fix it for you, too — quote reference #23512102-hc. Good luck!
Good morning, everyone, and a pinch and a punch for the first of the month! Today’s the day, according to WordPress, that we’re all going to be presented with the new Block Editor to use.
I’ve been in touch with WordPress Support, and they’ve explained to me how to switch back to the Classic Editor, should you wish to do this. The good news is that this is a one-time action: once you’ve switched back, you stay on the Classic Editor unless you choose to then switch to the Block Editor.
This is how you do it:
In the Block Editor, look for the ‘More tools & options’ button (looks like three dots in a vertical row just to the right of the green ‘Jetpack’ symbol). Click that, then, at the bottom, click on ‘Switch to Classic Editor’.
You may then be presented with a dialog that says ‘The new WordPress editor is coming’ — click on the ‘Not now’ link.
And that’s all there is to it! The next time you start a new post, you will be presented with the Classic Editor.
Have a great day!
Wibble 
Good information, thank you.
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You are very welcome!
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Thanks for sharing the information
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My pleasure. Hope it helps!
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You are a life saver, my friend. Just made the switch back to classic. Feels better now.
I can’t believe I haven’t noticed this before, though. 🤦♀️
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The ‘switch’ button was rather cunningly hidden.
Glad to have helped!
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Great! Thanks for sharing the information. Much appreciated.
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You are most welcome!
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Wow! Thanks. I just looked and it seems I’m still on Classic Editor anyway. Weird!
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I bet the switch is timed for later today, since Automattic (ie WordPress) is based in the US, and they’re some hours behind us.
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Yep!
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Pingback: Reverting to the WordPress Classic Editor — Wibble – ThoughtsnLifeBlog
I will share this on my blog. Thanks for this.
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Thank you for sharing!
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😊
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Reblogged this on EDC Writing – Believing Sight Unseen and commented:
Just had to reblog this – the post of the day!
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I’m so glad it is a one time action. I was wondering about that and it would have been further irritating, if I had to change it every time.
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I’m glad I’m able to confirm that for you :)
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Thank you for sharing.
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Yay!!! I don’t have to use the Block Editor 😁
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/dance :)
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I’m not sure if I made the change over or not. Things look the same and all is working well. I’ll leave well enough alone for now. But thanks for the info. I’ll keep it in mind if I need it.
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Thank You!
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You’re welcome :)
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So nice of you to save the day!
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I’ve done that a year or so ago. Do you think that stuck? Because today I opened my NROP to finish editing and… it was in my old editor. I’m glad WP didn’t “try me” first thing on a Monday morning.
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I’m not clear on what you’re saying, Sam. It sounds like the change WordPress threatened isn’t troubling you, which is good…?
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They’ve been threatening us with the new editor for well over a year (maybe 2?). About this time last year, every time I tried to write a post, they would recommend that I use the block editor which I didn’t like. In the end, I managed to find the “stick to classic” option. Or something like that. I have not been bothered ever since. It sounds exactly like what you mentioned only I did that a year ago. Fingers crossed. Although, I might dabble in the new editor part-time.
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Ah, I see what you mean! Yes, perhaps you’d already ‘flipped the switch’. Fingers crossed! (I’ve been using the new editor myself; it’s not that bad, although I haven’t found a way to get text to flow around pictures the way you can in the in the classic editor).
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I am bookmarking this page, just in case. I wrote a post today in classic editor. I haven’t even looked at the new block editor yet.
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That’s interesting. You’re not alone in reporting that the classic editor still working for you (see Sam’s comment above). I wonder why WordPress would scare us all with this news, and then not actually implement the switch? Strange.
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I don’t see that option at the bottom of my three dots on a new post. This is so frustrating as I don’t like this new editor, it’s very confusing. Am I the only one not seeing the option?
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Yeah, weird… I’ve just checked and that option seems to no longer be there. I’ll ask WordPress Support for assistance, and get back to you.
Welcome to Wibble! :)
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Hi again Jeanne. I’ve just had a chat with https://wordpress.com/help, and it turns out that they’ve removed this option, which is a bit sucky.
However, the Happiness Engineer I spoke to was able to force my blog back into the classic editor mode. And when I asked how I could help you, the suggestion was for you to contact support and quote this reference: #23512102-hc. Try that — and let me know how you get on?
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How do you even contact support? I’m so tired of being forced to use What They think is best. I actually tried writing a post last night and it was a constant more clicks to make it happen and adding media was a nightmare to find. I kept feeling like they didn’t want me to blog anymore! THANK YOU for your help!!!
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https://wordpress.com/help/contact — when you’re logged in. Should be fairly straightforward….
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I eventually found my way and tried asking for help and even referenced your no. But don’t seem to be offered any help. Pretty much told the only way to access the classic editor is within WP Admin. Sad that we don’t have an option if we really weren’t interested. Blogging won’t be fun for awhile as it’s too time consuming. Thanks for trying. Hope your classic editor stays for you.
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Sorry to hear that you couldn’t get help. I guess the best we can hope for in the long run is that they figure out how to make the ‘block editor’ work better.
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Here via ?RR.
I remember this debacle. It’s been a while and I thought things would get better by now (with the new editor), but with my recent ‘cannot edit posts’ issues, I know that things will NEVER be great again. How depressing is that? I liked my classic editor a whole bunch, but I have gotten used to the blocks, I guess. It’s probably because I really only use the paragraph block, the list, and the quote.
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It really is about time WordPress issue an apology for foisting this incomplete mess upon us before they’d ironed out the bugs. Of course they won’t do that. I’ve more or less got used to the blocks, but I continue to be thoroughly annoyed by its sluggishness. If I spend a couple of hours working on a post (which is quite common, for me), I find that the editor gets slower, and slower, and s l o w e r… to the point where it’s totally unusable. Sometimes it helps to save and exit; other times, that makes no difference. And having to wait for the damn editor to load a page is abominable in this day and age. If computers are getting faster, why is so much software becoming so insufferably slow? (No need to answer that; I know the answer: lazy programmers!)
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I hear ya. I usually don’t take that long (and if I do, I do it in parts), so I cannot attest to the slowness, but I experience something similar with Grammarly. It worked perfectly with the old editor and did not work at all with the new one. I guess it works now but it isn’t 100%. Sometimes I need to click out of that block for it to underline a clear mistake. And, it does not work on blocks that are shorter than 2-3 lines.
My reusable blocks have been acting up terribly lately, too.
BUT, oh well. This will lead us nowhere good, so let’s just grab a beer and laugh.
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Mr, Ohh! would agree that that’s the best way forward ;D
PS I’ve only just recently begun to toy with ‘reusable blocks’, and I fear they’re another thing that WordPress has messed up, their behaviour is most peculiar.
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