# Pasting \< and \> symbols into the editor turns into HTML entities

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/pasting-and-symbols-into-the-editor-turns-into-html-entities/111792
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [16 במרץ,‏ 2019,‏ 2:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pasting-and-symbols-into-the-editor-turns-into-html-entities/111792 "2019-03-16T14:35:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![YaserAlnajjar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/yaseralnajjar/32/100729_2.png) [@YaserAlnajjar](https://meta.discourse.org/u/YaserAlnajjar)
#### Post date: [16 במרץ,‏ 2019,‏ 2:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pasting-and-symbols-into-the-editor-turns-into-html-entities/111792/1 "2019-03-16T14:35:59Z")

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Hi

Whenever I paste some markdown text into discourse that has `<` or `>` within it, they get converted into `&lt;` and `&gt;`

For example, if I wanna paste:

```plaintext
<span>test</test>

```

It gets converted into

```plaintext
&lt;span&gt;test&lt;/span&gt;

```

We face this issue a lot with people where we tell them to paste their code for review, and their code gets scribbled 😕

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [16 במרץ,‏ 2019,‏ 5:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pasting-and-symbols-into-the-editor-turns-into-html-entities/111792/2 "2019-03-16T17:21:28Z")

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The solution is to do shift-control-v so that it doesn’t rewrite it that way.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![YaserAlnajjar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/yaseralnajjar/32/100729_2.png) [@YaserAlnajjar](https://meta.discourse.org/u/YaserAlnajjar)
#### Post date: [16 במרץ,‏ 2019,‏ 5:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pasting-and-symbols-into-the-editor-turns-into-html-entities/111792/3 "2019-03-16T17:28:21Z")

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Thanks man!

I was going to ask: is there a way to make it the default? Then I searched in the settings the word “paste” and I found:

> Enable automatic HTML to Markdown conversion when pasting text into the composer. (Experimental)

Just disabled it, and it works like a charm ❤

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/system/32/443519_2.png) [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [15 באפריל,‏ 2019,‏ 5:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pasting-and-symbols-into-the-editor-turns-into-html-entities/111792/4 "2019-04-15T17:28:39Z")

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