The Editor

Writing and Formatting

Writing and Formatting

Edit mode, drafts, and publishing

A page opens in read mode. Press ⌘ E or use the page menu to switch to edit mode. An empty page shows the prompt “Start writing, or press ”/” for commands…”.

Edit mode connects you to the collaboration server. Everyone editing the page sees the same document, with a connection dot and a collaborator count at the top of the editor. That bar, with Publish and Discard, stays at the top of the page with the formatting toolbar as you scroll, so you can publish from the end of a long page. Your keystrokes are saved continuously as an unpublished draft. Readers keep seeing the last published version until you say otherwise.

Discard asks for confirmation. It takes you back to read mode, showing the published page exactly as it was, and it is offered whenever the page has a draft, including one left by an earlier session. The draft you discard is kept in Page History, where you can restore it. Discard is unavailable while somebody else is editing the page, because their unpublished changes are in the same draft. Publish is available whenever the page has a draft, including one left by an earlier session or added by an assistant, and whenever someone else’s changes arrive while you are editing, without your typing anything first. It becomes available only once the editor has finished loading the page from the server, so it is unavailable while the editor is still connecting or is offline, and it is disabled when there is nothing new to publish.

If publishing would remove attachments, images, diagrams or other embedded blocks that the published page has, Publish says how many and asks first. Choose Keep editing if you did not remove them yourself, and Discard to go back to the published page.

If a publish does not go through, for example because the server cannot be reached, you stay in edit mode with your changes, and a notice says the page was not published. Press Publish again once the connection is back.

A page holding content the editor cannot open without changing it stays in read mode when you ask to edit it, with a notice saying so. Nothing on the page is changed. If what the editor cannot open is the page’s unpublished draft, you are asked whether to discard the draft; a copy goes to Page History first, and the published page can then be edited again.

Marks

Select text, then use the toolbar or a shortcut.

Highlight offers yellow, green, blue, pink, orange, and purple. Text color offers gray, red, orange, green, blue, purple, and Default to clear it.

Marks combine, inline code included: select some inline code and press Bold, or a link, and it stays code as well.

Input shortcuts

These convert as you type. The trailing space matters.

Press Backspace right after a conversion to undo it and keep the literal characters.

Arrows

Arrows typed as two or three characters become the arrow as soon as the last character is typed, with no space needed.

<= is left as you typed it, because it usually means “less than or equal”. Nothing is converted inside a code block or inline code. Press Backspace straight after an arrow appears to get the characters you typed back. The same arrows work in a page’s primer, in a chat message, and in a requirement’s statement.

For any other character that is not on your keyboard, use the Symbol entry in the slash menu (see Blocks and the Slash Menu).

Headings and blocks

The toolbar heading menu lists Normal text, Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3, and shows which one the cursor sits in. Shortcuts run deeper: ⌘ ⌥ 1 through ⌘ ⌥ 6 set any heading level, ⌘ ⌥ 0 returns to normal text.

Lists nest with Tab and unnest with ⇧ Tab. Enter on an empty list item ends the list. The Lists toolbar group holds bullet, numbered, and task lists. The Blocks group holds quote and divider.

A numbered list counts by level: 1, 2, 3 at the top, a, b, c one level in, i, ii, iii the level after that, and then round again. To count one list differently, put the cursor in it and open Numbering style in the Lists group, which can be opened only while the cursor is in a numbered list. It offers numbers, letters, capital letters, Roman numerals and capital Roman numerals, and By level to go back to counting by level. The choice applies to that one list; lists nested inside it keep counting by level. An HTML export keeps both; a Markdown export numbers every level 1, 2, 3, and a page sent to Confluence carries no style of its own.

Links

Click the link button in the Insert group and enter a URL. If text is selected, that text becomes the link; if nothing is selected, the URL itself goes in as a link where the cursor is. The Link slash command inserts the URL as a link where you typed /link. A bare domain gets https:// added for you. Hovering a link shows where it goes: the page’s title and its space for a link to another page, or the address for anything else. While you are editing, the same card lets you edit or remove the link.

To link to another page, type [[ and start searching. Pick a result and the page title is inserted as a live link. See Spaces and Pages for how page URLs are built.