Some HTML coding is incompatible with the Blackboard learning management system, and may prompt an Invalid HTML warning to be displayed. Copying and pasting text directly from Word documents or websites can create these conflicts, which may manifest as bizarre characters being displayed or the loss of drag-and-drop functionality. The previous solution for these scenarios was to copy text first into Notepad to strip out complex code, and then copying the text back into Blackboard. The Markup Validation tool can now remove incompatible HTML code for you automatically.  

1. The Invalid HTML warning, seen below, is triggered to identify potentially problematic code used to display text within a piece of course content.

2. To correct invalid HTML and remove the warning, click the options button for the folder or item containing invalid HTML, then click Edit on the drop-menu.

3. Select the Markup Validation tool on the text editor toolbar.

4. The Markup Validation tool will list warnings for each HTML conflict found in the content item, as well as the corrected HTML code that Blackboard recommends using. Click the Submit button to accept and use the corrected HTML. Click Cancel to prevent changes to HTML code.

5. Click Submit on the Edit Item page to finalize changes. The content item should now be displayed without HTML warnings.

Note: Using the Markup Validation tool may change font sizes. To readjust, click to Edit the item, highlight the resized text, then select a new font size.