going to need more to go on… maybe a link?

a likely issue is an out of date or mishaving theme/plugin that is not adding something to the wp editor properly… do you have a theme or plugin that adds buttons or other to the wp editor?

http://lesfan.com/forums/help-how-do-i/search-for-old-story/

At the bottom of this window here are Preview/Cancel/Submit Reply

I no longer have that on my site. 

> do you have a theme or plugin that adds buttons or other to the wp editor?

I’m not sure what you mean.

But I do not have the menu of options you have in this window: B for bold, I for Italics, etc. 
None. 

yes, I understand the issue… as I said, often caused by other theme or plugin improperly adding things to the wp editor (we just show the wp editor on the front end)…  or a javascript conflict..

I dont see any obvious js conflicts, but since I cannot post as guest, cant really look with the wp editor loaded on the front end…

a quick test would be to try a temp switch to the default wp theme and see if things improve…

also, are all sp plugins up to date?  and of course, you have our tinymce plugin active?

switch the theme of the entire site? or the forum theme?   I’m not inclined to switch the forum theme as the site is very active. 

All plugins are up to date. NO – I don’t have the tinymce plugin active. I’m going to hold off for now. I want get this resolved before adding to it. 

then confused… without tinymce plugin, you will only see a plain textarea like that…  to get more fancy wysiwg and additional buttons, you need the tinymce plugin for simple press…

since you are running a custom theme, how old is it?  perhaps you need to update to use the integrated toolbar?  https://simple-press.com/documentation/codex/installation/changes/theme-and-templates-5-2-0-to-5-2-6/

and yes, I was talking about the wp theme…  but from what I can see in the image, without tinymce plugin for sp, that looks about right…  so what do you think is not working?