How to safely modify WYSIWYG report code?

I have created a couple of fairly complicated WYSIWYG reports which I would like to modify slightly. Specifically I would like to skip over empty attributes that haven't been filled out and not display empty sections. The problem is I can no longer edit the report in WYSIWYG mode once the code has been changed. So I would like to keep a copy of the original WYSIWYG report around for reference. I tried to get around the issue by making copies of the WYSIWYG reports and modify the code of the copies. However I can't seem to find a way to copy the reports properly. The code doesn't run if copied verbatim to the new report. I also tried saving the original report as a template and creating a new report using the template. Only part of the code is in the new report, for example, the table of content is gone. Any help would be appreciated.