ckeditor value saves for one click event but not other

Trying to troubleshoot a bug on this little legacy app and have run into a problem.

The left column contains a gridview with the master records, when a row is selected the main area of the page populates with the details for that row including a ckeditor instance to capture notes and a save button calling a click event which saves the detail changes. The pace at which the process moves is fast and they have asked to be able to not have to click the save button, but to have the application save automatically when they select another record on the gridview.

The RowSelect event saves the current values and then performs the logic to populate the fields with details from the newly selected master record.

I created a helper method which performs the left = right mapping from the form elements when given a detail record. This means that both the button OnClick event and the row Select event call the same method to process values.

All fields except the ckeditor instance values are passed into the eventhandler, but when a new row is selected the editor value does not save where as when the button is pressed it is. I'm unclear on why it would save one one and not the other.