New Description Formatting deleting & changing informationQ
Asked by MarBelle:

The recent changes made to the Description section of the Trello cards is automatically breaking links, stripping information and inserting errant spaces and deleting paragraph breaks.

For example, we use the Description to house our social media copy for each card which represents an article on our site <https://directorsnotes.com> such as follows:

**Instagram:**

**<https://www.instagram.com/bousherandgeedirectors/>**

**// Premiere // "We shot in 4:3 to make June's world feel fittingly claustrophobic."**

**Directing Duo @bousherandgeedirectors unpack their decision to shoot in a tight 4:3 aspect ratio for their dark comedy @youreabsolutelyrightshortfilm , a short film about a lonely, paranoid hoarder who becomes seduced into doing the unthinkable by a ever-affirming hotline.**

**Watch it \& check out the full interview over on DN now - LINK IN BIO ??**

**// CREDITS //**

**Alison Fitzjohn: @alisonfitzjohn**   
**Andrew Goddard: [@Andrew](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/10134)_goddard**   
**Brendan Harvey: @brendanharvey_**   
**Chloe Byatt: @chloebyatt**

---

This has worked fine for years (and a few thousand Trello cards) until the recent changes which when entering the Description area, automatically strips out any text which begins with "@" - kind of crucial for social media posts - as well as breaking the URL format so those all have to be manually fixed.

How do I disable the Description formatting because as is this is now unusable and is causing far too much additional work for our team.


Answers:
author: Cody C.
body: Hi MarBelle, sorry for the trouble with the transition over to the new editor. The main goal is to provide a consistent editor experience across Atlassian products, but I can definitely understand how it's a shift from how you've used the description in the past.

**Breaking links, stripping information and inserting errant spaces and deleting paragraph breaks**

Are you seeing that same behavior when you switch to view the markdown behind the scenes? Sometimes this can be useful, particularly when copying and pasting content from Trello into other editors. You can do that by clicking the "M?" button in the top-right.

If you want to see full URLs rather than Smartlinks (previews), you can choose that option on the Link preferences page: <https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/link-preferences> by selecting "Display URL" as your default.

If you want to insert a single line break, try pressing `shift + enter` instead of `enter`.

**The @ symbol**

This is a macro in Trello and Atlassian as well, so it can definitely collide when you want that as text rather than as a notification to another Trello or Atlassian user. In my test, when I view a card description, or when I switch to Markdown view while editing, the full text is visible and copyable. It's only when I'm editing the description in standard mode that it converts to a @ ... . Is that what you're seeing as well?

There isn't a way to disable this formatting I'm afraid, but we definitely want it to be as functional as possible and I'm glad to submit feedback on your behalf. If none of those suggestions improve things, please let me know which issues are still causing trouble and I can pass those along to the team.

Thanks again for taking the time to tell us about this, we appreciate it!

comments: author: MarBelle
body: Thanks for your response but this is beyond frustrating. You've taken what was a basic text editor and broken 100s of hours of work that we rely on daily by adding formatting we didn't want nor were warned about.

As stated, any @ mentions in social media text we have in there (so all of them!) converts to a @ ... in the standard view, and the markdown suggestion isn't reliable either as any @ usernames which include a full stop i.e. "@user.name" appear in the markdown view as "@user .name" which means they all need to be manually double checked before they can be used!

As is, Trello no longer works in a reliable way for anyone trying to use it as part of a social media calendar system and has negatively altered years of work my team and I have put into it without warning.

How can I export all the cards we have in there in a clean and logical plain text manner or as a CSV or similar so we can migrate to another system because this isn't practical and is resulting in mistakes and needless additional work?


author: Cody C.
body: I definitely hear where you're coming from and we'd hate to see you go, but of course ultimately I understand you want to be using the tools that suit your needs best!

We have a team actively working on the editor experience, and I've let them know about this issue in particular.

As far as exports go, there are two options:

1. JSON: available on all plans
2. CSV: available for Premium workspaces

We have more detail on that here: <https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/exporting-data-from-trello/>


author: Cody C.
body: [@MarBelle](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5142834) We've recently update the way twitter handles are rendered! I know it doesn't address every snag, but if it's not too much trouble could you check to see if those are working better now?

They should be visible all the time, even when editing the description of the card. I'll keep an eye out for your reply!


author: MarBelle
body: [@Cody C.](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4043440) Thanks for coming back to me. Just had a look and the twitter handles now seem to be working. Some look broken for "@user.name" configurations but render correctly when you click into edit mode.

Much appreciated!


author: Cody C.
body: I have to apologize, but just wanted to let you know that this improvement was rolled-back this afternoon after a performance regression was identified. It's something that will be reimplemented once that performance concern is fixed, but you'll see the old behavior for now. Sorry for the back-and-forth here!