Migrating a Rich Text Editor : CKEditor 5 to SynapEditor (with code)
Disclosure: I work on the team behind SynapEditor. 🧩 TL;DR: Moving from CKEditor 5 to SynapEditor is a one-to-one swap in three steps: installation, toolbar config, and content/event APIs. The main reason to consider it is Office document fidelity (Word, PowerPoint, Excel import/export). Full runnable example at the end. Switching rich text editors sounds like a big job, but most of the work is a straightforward, one-to-one swap. This guide walks through moving an existing CKEditor 5 integration over to SynapEditor: loading the library, wiring up the toolbar and content APIs, and a complete working example you can copy and run. ⚖️ Which is better: CKEditor or SynapEditor? Both CKEditor and SynapEditor are mature, capable editors. If you already have CKEditor running, it clearly does a lot right. So the question isn't really "which is better" in the abstract, it's which one fits where your product is heading. Two things tend to drive the decision: 📜 Licensing and support. CKEditor 4 reached end of life in 2023, and security fixes now sit behind a paid Extended Support agreement. If you're revisiting the integration anyway, it's a natural moment to reconsider the editor itself. 📄 Office documents. This is where SynapEditor differs most. It imports a broad range of office formats: MS Word (.doc, .docx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx, ODT, and HTML, and exports back to Word (.docx) with formatting preserved. If your users upload real documents and expect the layout to survive, that's worth weighing. CKEditor 5 SynapEditor Core editing ✅ ✅ CKEditor 4 still supported Paid ESM only n/a Word / PPT / Excel import-export Limited ✅ Native With that out of the way, let's migrate. 📋 What you'll need [ ] An existing CKEditor 5 integration [ ] A SynapEditor license and API key (free at Get Started ) [ ] About 15 minutes for a basic swap ⚙️ 1. Installation CKEditor 5 loads from a single script. SynapEditor loads from a script and a stylesheet: the UI is styled by tha