 <p>You load ckeditor and after you fill the textarea. No way, the ckeditor is loaded. An has not live update. You must change order.</p> <pre><code>&lt;script&gt; function BindData() { $("#input").val('This is CK Editor Demo'); } BindData(); $(document).ready(function () { $("#input").ckeditor(); }); &lt;/script&gt; </code></pre>