Markdown is a simple markup language you can use to easily add formatting, links, and images to plain text. If Markdown is enabled in your account, you can use it in the following places:
- Ticket comments (from the agent interface)
- Macros
- Agent signatures
- Dynamic content
For agents to use Markdown, an administrator has to enable it in your account. (see Enabling formatting options for agents). You cannot use Markdown if rich-text is enabled for your account.
Topics covered in this article:
Adding Markdown to text
The following table shows examples of how you can use Markdown to add common formatting.
You can also watch this short video.
Formatting | Entered text | Published text |
---|---|---|
Bold | This is how you **bold** text. | ![]() |
Italics | This is how you *italicize* text. | ![]() |
Bulleted lists | * Bullet one (don't forget a space after the asterisk) * Bullet two
Note: You must type a line break before and after the list.
|
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Numbered lists | 1. Step one 2. Step two
Note: Do not use a hashtag (#) when creating numbered lists in Markdown, as the
symbol is used for other formatting.
Note: You must type a line break before and after the list.
|
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Nested lists | * This is the first level of this list. * To make a second level, add two spaces before the asterisk or number.
Note: You can add things like images, quote blocks, or links to a nested list in
addition to just text.
Note: You must type a line break before and after the list.
|
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Headings | # Heading level one (with a space after the #) ## Heading level two ### Heading level three You can add up to six heading levels.
Note: You can add a row of equal signs (=) under a line of text to create
Heading
level one, or a row of dashes (-) under a line of text to create a Heading
level two.
|
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Block quotes |
> Block quotes have to start and end with a blank line > And each line of the quote starts with a right angle bracket and a space |
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Inline code | Here is some `inline code.` | ![]() |
Code blocks | ``` This is a code block. ```
Note: Creating a blank line and then indenting the
next line or lines with four spaces creates a code block too.
Note: You must type a line break before and after the code block.
|
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Images |  Community tip! Evan shares a simple tip in our forums for embedding an image that's not hosted. |
![]() |
Links | [Link display text](http://www.sampleurl.com) | ![]() |
Images that are also links | [](linkurl) | ![]() |
Links to tickets | We addressed this in ticket #61. | ![]() |
Horizontal rule line |
---
Note: You must type a line break before and after the hyphens.
|
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Line break |
Line 1 Line 2
Note: You must type two line breaks before each .
|
Line 1
Line 2 |
Previewing Markdown in ticket comments
When you use Markdown in a ticket comment, you can preview your formatting before submitting the comment. You enter your comment with Markdown formatting, like in the example below.
Then, click Preview to view how your ticket comment will look when posted.
120 Comments
Hi, we are preparing a ticket form with dynamic content to duplicate it in multiple help centers. Could a link be clickable on the "Description (optional)" of a ticket field? We put a dynamic content in it with the classic link but it doesnt seem to work...
Like Andrea - I believe tables in markdown would be a valuable addition! I'm off to find that feature request… +1
David
Markdown looks like it is going out of fashion at Zendesk. Check out this section:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/200285197-Zendesk-Beta-Rich-Outbound-Comments-for-Agents
This will allow agents to paste tables into tickets and allow text formatting without preview or learning Markdown.
@Mercedes,
Markdown is not supported in Triggers and Automations, but you can use HTML.
Let us know if anything else comes up.
Hi Graeme,
I saw that shortly after posting the above comment :) Looking forward to it rolling out!
It would be great to have support for markdown tables. They are very useful
Hi Tomás,
You might be interested a beta we are currently running that adds a WYSIWYG editor to tickets -- this editor will support tables. You can find out more about it here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/200285197-Zendesk-Beta-Rich-Outbound-Comments-for-Agents
Sorry Laura but we are not very interested in that feature. We use markdown because of the speed and we want to continue using it. I think that the new Rich Comments feature you mentioned could be a threat to markdown (developers start focusing on that feature and markdown support is left behind or even dropped), so I'm not very excited about it
While I would not be as emphatic as Tomás, I agree that Markdown does have some real efficiency and maintenance advantages over WYSIWYG HTML. Also, I'd be very reluctant to switch to a WYSIWYG editor as ill-behaved as the current HC HTML editor (though it is an improvement over the execrable Forum editor which preceded it, so the trajectory is good!)
Hey guys!
I did some checking on this and here's what I was able to find out: If you add Markdown to the ticket on it's own (ie: through cut/paste, text expander, etc) it will not render properly in the WYSIWYG editor. However, if you add the Markdown to your ticket using a Macro, it will render correctly - it gets converted to HTML before it's applied to the ticket. So Markdown will be supported in that context. I'm also a big fan of Markdown over WYSIWYG, so I understand your concerns. Hopefully that helps to ease your minds a little bit!
Please let me know if you have any other questions!
I have a very real need to use Outlook as a mail client to send support email via ZenDesk due to my accessibly software to support my dyslexia, so I do not want to use the Web Interface where possible. I would dearly love to see formatting preserved from Outlook (and other email clients) to the end customer, and better integration with these email clients.
How can I use markup to display the first and last elements of a nested dropdown selection but without the :: in there? I have a custom field that I pull through to certain macros- this dropdown field contains information nested in the following format-Company name::Site. I would like the macro to pull from this field and display the following format in text- Company Name Site (without the ::) but I can't seem to create this (I have it set up to display the last selection from a custom dropdown field in other areas of the macro but I can't seem to add both the first and last in that format). Can someone help me please? Many thanks.
@Ellie Elstob-Wardle
You cannot remove the :: characters using mark down discussed here. But you can using Liquid Markup (confusing isn't it?) Liquid is discussed here:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203660966
In your macro, you will already have discovered how to find the custom field value:
Where 24724112 is the custom field ID found on the edit custom field screen.
Remove the offending :: characters and replace with a single space with Liquid as follows:
@Graeme
Thanks- that's great! Ah yes, still confusing markdown and Liquid markup obviously. This was really helpful, thank you.
Hi, Can you change the size of text using Markdown? Thanks!
Hi James,
You can use the header formatting options (on both Markdown and the rich text editor in tickets), but there's no way to change the size of the normal paragraph font, no.
Best,
Erin
@Erin, @Jessie:
Triple-quoted code blocks on the website have stopped wrapping again (they truncate). They still seem to be wrapping ok in notification emails.
If you need to see an example, please feel free to look at our ticket 62399.
Hey Jonathan, I'm going to open a Support ticket on your behalf so we can dig a little deeper on this one. We'll follow up there shortly!
Thanks, Madison. For the record, my bug report was rejected "Working as Designed". I've opened a feedback thread here:
"Code blocks no longer wrap online -- good or bad?"
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/209424478-Code-blocks-no-longer-wrap-online-good-or-bad-
and would welcome input from other users.
I'm setting up some macros and the first line is:
# Product Repair
The problem I'm having is that it is putting a line space above the heading line. Is there a way to not have that line...?
Hey Brad!
Can you post a screenshot of what you're putting in the macro, and how it looks when applied? I'm not sure I understand what you're describing.
Hi Jessie,
Just noticed what must be a very new bug in markdown rendering. After a bulleted or numbered indented list, the expected blank line is omitted before the following paragraph. My ugly short-term workaround is to insert a paragraph containing only a single period character. Thanks!
Thanks for the heads up @Jonathan. We're looking into it. Looks like the margin was removed there by another change that over applied.
Ditto to what Jonathan said. Hope this gets fixed soon.
FTR, ZenDesk devs (via support) suggested a better workaround: beginning the following paragraph wtih a line containing ` `. I had forgotten that HTML special chars are usable in Markdown, so that works great.
Thanks Jonathan!
Thanks for coming back and sharing that, Jonathan!
@Jonathan @Patrisha we just released a fix for this issue with ol/ul margins missing in markdown.
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