SharePoint List Item with rich text field, can't exit classic experience

[RobertAttrell]

Hello, really odd issue here, don't know how it happens, and can't fix without burning the list item down. Sometimes (about 1/750 or something) when a list item's rich text field is edited by one of our users, the rich text field ends up 'stuck' in in 'Classic Experience' mode when any other person comes to read/edit.

Oddly, the 'edit form' itself looks fine, it's just the pop-up 'edit' text field box stuck in Classic Experience, and we have 4 rich text fields but they can flip to and freeze on Classic Experience independently (usually only 1 field flips but sometimes more than 1 at a time, happens with different users). The 'Exit Classic Experience' text link at the bottom of the field is there when in SharePoint, but clicking it does nothing, and looking at the field in Teams (as our users have been) just shows a blank screen.

The only resolution I have to this is getting a ticket about it, and I have to copy the text out, 'reset' the item to version 1.0, and then paste everything back in the way it was to fix it.

Any tips or even a quick way to activate 'exit classic experience' (even via PowerShell or something) would be amazing!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

OK I have accidentally stumbled into what seems to be the root of this issue after banging my head against various walls for the last couple of weeks. Turns out any time the rich text field ended up stuck in this 'Classic Experience' mode with the exit button ceasing to function, there was a table (containing just text) in the rich text window.

The fix I've landed on (which is much easier than burning it down and starting over) is to cut out the text in the rich text field and paste it back in as plain text. Reopening the text field after this uses the modern experience again and restores the ability to actually see the text box inside of Teams. I haven't had this happen often enough to check what it looks like when this happens for an owner of the site/team inside of Teams (mostly working in SharePoint myself) to know if I would only be able to see the classic experience text box in SharePoint and would also just get a blank screen in Teams, but I'll try this next time it happens.