Changes to AdBlock and EasyList blacklists affected Google Docs pages to edit documents and slides.
Google Docs started to display formatting errors on the document and slide pages for some users. Google users who use Adblock are facing difficulty in Google Docs.
The reports indicate that the texts of the archives have started to be displayed improperly in the past few days, but the company says it cannot resolve the situation. That’s because the situation would have been for ad blockers.
The company has recently resolved the issue that occurred when trying to build a new document or presentation. The following message has appeared on the computer, “Google Docs encountered an error. Try reloading this page or coming back again in a few minutes.”
AdBlock confirms the error in Google Docs
An update to the extensions made the text cross the page boundary in documents and overlap with other information on slides. The situation was reported by Reddit and Twitter users. And apparently, it has to do with AdBlock and EasyList block lists, used by several ad blockers.
The reason behind this is not clear yet. But it can be corrected in some ways. According to a report by Android Police, this problem is coming to users who have enabled the ad blocker in Google Chrome.
Since there is a problem with text formatting in Google Docs due to an issue caused by AdBlock, some users are unable to edit it.
Searched for by a user, AdBlock confirmed the error and indicated that it is working to resolve it. “It looks like there is a problem with one of the primary filter lists in AdBlock. But the authors of the filter list are working on a fix right now,” said the service.
@ricardojrsousa Thanks for flagging this! It looks like there's an issue with one of the primary filter lists in AdBlock, but the filter list authors are working on a fix as we speak. Appreciate the report!
— AdBlock (@getadblock) April 14, 2021
A permanent solution to the weird bug
As long as the situation is not resolved, the way out is to disable adblockers or include addresses on your whitelist. In addition to drive.google.com, as indicated by the Google executive, it is important to add docs.google.com, the URL that, in fact, is used to edit documents and presentations.
In his Twitter profile, Google Drive product manager Remy Burger pointed out the problem with margins and paragraphs. He noticed that changes in AdBlock and EasyList caused it.
If you encounter any issues with margins or paragraphs in Google Docs right now, this is due to recent changes that @getadblock / EasyList made. Unfortunately it's out of our control. Either put https://t.co/YzuEBoCXg1 on the allowlist, or disable the ad blocker to get it fixed.
— Remy Burger (@RemyBurger) April 14, 2021
He said that this was out of their control, unfortunately. But there’s an alternate permanent solution that can help us resolve on our own. He advised us to whitelist drive.google.com or disabled the ad blocker to fix the issue permanently.
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