<p>I actually created a dummy account today to try this out. It did let me go back and edit after getting a pdf preview.</p>
<p>My essay appears as one giant paragraph. :/</p>
<p>Bump bump bump</p>
<p>Has anyone solved this?? For some reason, my DD had no trouble getting paragraphs to appear, but DS can’t get anything to preview besides one long block of text. We’ve tried a number of fixes…</p>
<p>Just had a huge breakthrough…since DD didn’t have any trouble using her Mac, we just tried DS’s on the Mac, and suddenly…no formatting problems! We had been using Firefox when he couldn’t get the formatting, so we switched to Chrome on his PC, and the formatting came out perfectly. Could it just be a Firefox browser issue??</p>
<p>For me it worked to put two spaces between each paragraph in the text editor like this:</p>
<p>There still won’t be full spaces between the paragraphs in the final version, but this will keep the program from putting everything into one giant block.</p>
<p>Hey, so I tried the thing in halcyonheather’s post, but it didn’t work. What did work was inserting a random bit of punctuation between the lines, like so:</p>
<p>I am writing a sentence, about to end a paragraph.
’
Now this is a new paragraph.</p>
<p>Hopefully other people can use this, it helps a lot with formatting to make paragraph divisions clear.</p>
<p>I did what Collegefortwins did…switched to Internet Explorer and formatting worked (on PC)!</p>
<p>If you’re having trouble with the essay formatting, try using Google Chrome! I was on Firefox and it wasn’t letting me put any spaces in at all - it would remove them all and just give me one big block of text. I finally downloaded Google Chrome and tried it, and it worked absolutely fine. Couldn’t put two spaces between paragraphs, as others have said, but I at least could have more than one paragraph!</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>
<p>Neither Chrome nor Firefox fixed the essay formatting problem for my DS, he ended up using Safari to submit. Thanks so much for suggesting different browsers!</p>
<p>I am still not able to solve this problem.
Tried following options:
- Copy statement to notepad. Put paragraph break(signal and double breaks) with no leading spaces and copy and paste from there.
- Insert the paragraph breaks directly in common app by inserting carriage returns (1 or 2).
- Changed browser from firefox to chrome and back to firefox.
But once I click continue it removes paragraphs, so they do not show anywhere, even in preview.
Trying early choice, panicking. Will also try IE now.
Will appreciate any other break thru any one else got.</p>
<p>I can’t get a paragraph break between my 1st and 2nd paragraph! 
I have tried doing all I could. I have the breaks between the other paragraphs. I have total 7 paragraphs. BUT I CANT HAVE a break between 1st and 2nd :((((((</p>
<p>Anybody can help?</p>
<p>So frustrating. Our D had that problem and ended up starting fresh. First save a draft elsewhere, then delete the essay from your common app account. Start with a version typed in notepad and paste from there. Good luck.</p>
<p>[Common</a> Application 2013-2014 Essay Format Update: Hallelujah, We Have Paragraphs! | College Essay Advisors: Personalizing the Personal Statement](<a href=“http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/common-application-2013-2014-essay-format-update-hallelujah-we-have-paragraphs/]Common”>Common Application 2013-2014 Essay Format Update)</p>
<p>@lookingforward, already read and tried all those + common app FAQ etc. Nothing helped (changing from firefox to chrome etc, copying from notepad etc…)
IE was the relief, was able to insert paragraphs in the text box when used IE and it kept, showed up fine in preview. (Even though Common App newletter yesterday said not to use IE).
However italics in not working in IE, which was working in firefox. So now I am forced to make a choice between italics vs paragraph.
Common App must have hired Elbonians to develop this website/application.</p>
<p>Same problem here! Cannot get a paragraph break beteen 1 and 2.</p>
<p>Open a SR to college App, and all they did replied back with canned response from their FAQ. They did not even read that I already tried all that, I put that in SR. Totally useless. I do not see a phone number to talk to anyway at common App. So annoying and frustrating.</p>
<p>Here is a technique that finally worked for our D when she had two paragraph breaks that seemed unfixable.
- Copy your whole essay from your CA account out to a Word document, leaving your CA account open and logged on.<br>
- In the Word version, select and copy a paragraph break that was working in CA.
- Paste it over the bad paragraph break in your CA account, replacing the bad with the good.</p>
<p>Here’s what you do:</p>
<p>Copy and paste directly from Microsoft Word. It works perfectly. When you paste it, you’ll see that error message pop up (“Sorry, we messed up some formatting, etc.”) and see a lot of weird large spaces between your paragraphs. That’s fine, just leave it and click “Continue.” Then, you’ll see in the print preview PDF that everything looks just right.</p>
<p>I’m using Google Chrome. Not sure if the browser really makes a difference, but just in case.</p>
<p>I am having the same issue. ugh!</p>