Excerpt in Quick Edit

[saladgoat]

Pretty simple request and hoping to see it in a future version of WordPress:
the ability to edit the excerpt in the Quick Edit screen on the Posts page.
Seems everything else, including Tags, can be edited there, so why not the Excerpt?
Thanks!

[webcommsat]

Thanks for this suggestions @saladgoat .

We have done some testing on this to see how easy it would be to add and edit text in the Quick Edit screen, particularly on smaller screens and devices. Writing custom excerpts could be more difficult in practical terms for users if it was editable in Quick Edit. It also could add a considerable amount of clutter to the Quick Edit view.

We were uncertain of the mass value in practice of an editable excerpt option in Quick Edit when considering it against a variety of different types of posts and content. Some of the toolkits, social media testing and SEO tools that are in use are more effective if a user is editing the excerpt in the edit view of the post itself. Some of these tools display commentary or show previews of the excerpt, which are useful for language, length, how the excerpt will display in embeds and social media. If you edited the excerpt in Quick Edit, you would still need to go into the post to gain the benefit of such tools, and make any changes, and if necessary, check the tools again.

Also writing or editing an excerpt in Quick Edit would be in the absence of being able to see the copy in the post itself. From how editors often use excerpts, it can be much easier to be able to see the copy you are creating an excerpt for and this leads to a greater accuracy and memory of the correct text when a user is needing to update a number of excerpts.

@saladgoat did you have anymore thoughts on this or details you wanted to add? The above are my views from exploring this with others, but please do come back if you feel there is a further case for the change you have identified and if it is something you would like to work on to develop the idea. Thanks.

[saladgoat]

@webcommsat I posted this almost two years ago! lol

As you point out there are now more and better third party tools for excerpts, this probably isn't as needed for so many people anymore.

I think I saw somewhere a way to add code to the functions.php to add this ability, but I never did it, which I guess is the best demonstration of just how badly I needed this option! lol

I do not feel as strongly about this anymore. Yes, if you added it, I would probably use it, but your reasons for leaving it alone seem better, so unless someone else has a strong opinion about this, I would just let it go.

Thanks for considering it though!