What to do when WordPress WYSIWYG Visual Editor is missing

I’ve noticed occasionally that the Visual Editor for WordPress will occasionally break.  When it does, you get a severely limited editor, that looks something like this:

I can’t explain why this happens, but I’ve figured out a quick fix for it (and I’ve tried it on several occasions.. it always seems to fix it.)

You’ll need to go into your user profile.

Then edit the user that you’re experiencing the problem with.

Select the option “Disable the visual editor when writing”.  Then at the bottom of the page click “Update User”.  Then, on the same page, uncheck “Disable the visual editor when writing” and again, click “Update User”.  This ensures that the visual editor is re-enabled.

Now when you try to edit a post, your visual editor should be working!