How to Restore Elementor as the Default Editor After Switching to the WordPress Editor

While supporting the website https://daranener.shop/, we needed to correct the German translation on one of its pages. Since our good friend AI was going to handle the correction, we decided not to overcomplicate things — just copy the page code, send it to the chat, get the translation, replace everything, and done. According to this plan, I opened the page and clicked the “Return to WordPress Editor” button (better don’t do this), then switched to code editor mode and copied the entire page code. Nothing seemed wrong at first: the error was fixed, the code pasted back, and the page was saved. But when I opened it in the browser, I found that some styles were broken. I opened the page and clicked “Edit with Elementor” — and it loaded perfectly. In the editor, everything displayed correctly. The issue was that the default editor for this page was WordPress, not Elementor, and as a result, it wasn’t applying all the necessary styles.

What Actually Happens

1. The _elementor_edit_mode field in the wp_postmeta table is set to default
2. The page is no longer processed by Elementor, external styles are stripped
3. You can still edit with Elementor, but the design is broken

How to Fix It

1. Find the Page ID

In the WordPress admin panel, hover over the “Edit” button in the Pages list and check the URL at the bottom of the screen. You’ll see the page identifier (e.g., post=3427).

2. Run this in the MySQL database (if using PhpMyAdmin, go to the SQL tab):

INSERT INTO wp_postmeta (post_id, meta_key, meta_value)
VALUES (3427, '_elementor_edit_mode', 'builder')
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE meta_value = 'builder';

INSERT INTO wp_postmeta (post_id, meta_key, meta_value)
VALUES (3427, '_elementor_edit_mode', 'builder')
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE meta_value = 'builder';

3. If you get this error:

ERROR 1364 (HY000): Field 'meta_id' doesn't have a default value

ERROR 1364 (HY000): Field 'meta_id' doesn't have a default value

This means that the meta_id field in the wp_postmeta table is missing the AUTO_INCREMENT property. That’s why Elementor couldn’t be restored as the default editor. To fix this:

ALTER TABLE wp_postmeta
MODIFY COLUMN meta_id bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
ADD PRIMARY KEY (meta_id);

ALTER TABLE wp_postmeta
MODIFY COLUMN meta_id bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
ADD PRIMARY KEY (meta_id);

4. Retry adding _elementor_edit_mode

INSERT INTO wp_postmeta (post_id, meta_key, meta_value)
VALUES (3427, '_elementor_edit_mode', 'builder')
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE meta_value = 'builder';

INSERT INTO wp_postmeta (post_id, meta_key, meta_value)
VALUES (3427, '_elementor_edit_mode', 'builder')
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE meta_value = 'builder';

5. Check in WordPress:

• Go to “Pages”
• You should see “Edit with Elementor” next to the page title

Now Elementor is again the default editor for the page. The design is restored, styles are applied, and everything works as expected.

If you want to properly translate a page created in Elementor to another language — check out our article on how to export and import pages via templates at this link.