Gutenberg: No way to drag metabox back into sidebar / below content if there are no other metaboxes there

[ZebulanStanphill]

The issue

If there is a metabox in the sidebar area, you can drag it into the larger area below the content area. However, once you have dragged metaboxes out of the sidebar, there is no way to drag any of them back into the sidebar unless you move them back from the Classic Editor interface. The same applies to moving all the metaboxes out of the area below the main content of the post.

Still an issue in Gutenberg 7.2.0.

[xenobytezero]

Confirm that this is still an issue in 3.5.0

[ZebulanStanphill]

This is still an issue in master. Could this get the bug label?

[xenobytezero]

Still an issue in 4.1.0.

[earnjam]

@ZebulanStanphill Can you provide some instructions for those who want to easily replicate this? Like a plugin or something to use for rendering the problematic meta boxes?

[ZebulanStanphill]

@earnjam I would say the Yoast SEO plugin is a common example and simple to try out. It doesn't really matter what plugin you use, because the bug affects all metaboxes.

Basically, if there are no metaboxes in the sidebar, you can not move any metaboxes from the area below the post content over to the sidebar. Vice-versa, if there are no metaboxes in the area below the post content, you can not move any metaboxes from the sidebar into that area. The drop zone essentially is unreachable unless there is already a metabox there.

[earnjam]

Ok, I see what you're saying. I used Yoast SEO and Exclude Pages from Menu so that I'd have one in each spot.

I moved the Exclude Pages meta box out of the sidebar and to the bottom area.
After that, dragging either meta box to the right just keeps growing the content area, never allowing you to get outside of it and onto the sidebar.
It's the same in the other direction, except it grows the sidebar space downward while dragging.

Basically there is no dropzone unless there is an existing metabox in the space.

I kinda wonder if they should even be movable from the sidebar/bottom at all. Like maybe just allow reordering in place, but not dragging between them.

[xenobytezero]

I would say that I definitely prefer to be able to have all on the sidebar or a mix. As far as I can tell, everything defaults to the bottom, so only allowing re-ordering might not work in this case.

[danbru1989]

Still an issue in 5.1.1

[avdi]

Is there a workaround for this?

[ZebulanStanphill]

@avdi You can create a new post/page using the classic editor, move metaboxes to the bottom or side, save the dummy post/page, and then next time you use the block editor, the metaboxes will be in the corresponding locations. Or at least, that's how it worked last time I tried several months ago.

[sybrew]

save the dummy post/page

Saving isn't necessary. The meta box' placement is done via AJAX, independent of post-saving actions.

[HooK2000]

If your metabox was a the bottom to begin with you can reset your metabox layout like so: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/38646/reset-positions-of-metaboxes-in-admin

So yes, this is still an issue with WP 5.5. in mid 2020.

[pixolin]

Issue was reported by a user in the German support forums for WordPress 5.5.1, too.

[tacoverdo]

This behavior is leading to a very confusing user experience, as you can move the metaboxes around as long as there was a metabox in each position (bottom and sidebar) when you loaded the page. As soon as you move all the metaboxes to a single position and then refresh the page, you can no longer move them to the other position.

I've found a few workarounds for this problem;

• Enable a new metabox that defaults to the position where you currently don't have any metabox active.
• Start a new website and forget about your current one.
• Modify the admin-ajax request to force a move to a new position.