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. |
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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.
115 Comments
Many thanks, @Mayra, works for me (after a hard refresh of the ZD browser tab, of course).
Thanks so much @Mayra, just shared the good news with my team :)
For the record: Sometime between last Thursday evening and Saturday morning UTC, Zendesk Markdown's handling of inline code changed significantly. Previously, placeholders inside of code text *were* expanded. Afterwards, they were not. This probably makes sense, but it would have been good to have had a heads up. Thanks!
Is there a keyboard shortcut to toggle the Preview look on your ticket comments when formatting with markdown? If not, can one be added somehow?
Thanks!
It looks like markdown support has been dropped (today) in favour of a WYSIWYG editor.
@Jeroen: that shouldn't be happening and we're investigating it for you now.
Markdown is also broken for my team today. Hope this gets resolved soon!
@Chelsea: we've identified the issue and we're working on a fix. I'm sorry for the disruption. To rectify, head to your account settings and toggle the ticket settings to markdown and your account will switch back to markdown.
@Chelsea Day Apologies about this. We recently released a change so that all new Zendesk trials are created with the rich text editor. This over applied to a few older accounts that never had a true setting in our database. We're working on reverting this now to ensure all affected accounts go back to their original setting.
You can immediately change back to markdown by going to the Ticket settings page on your account (/agent/admin/tickets) and changing the setting to markdown.
Thank you for the quick replies! Toggling markdown off, and back on did the trick!
Can you include a quick notation about how "#123456" will create a link to the URL for Ticket 123456 in whichever instance you're in? I can't find it in here and would like to be able to point new employees to this article for all the markdown information. Thanks!
@pat - simply doing exactly what you have written above will work
i.e. In the email reply just add the text #123456, and the reply sent by Zen will add a hyperlink to the text pointing to your ticket at https://<youraccount>.zendesk.com/tickets/123456, or whatever
I've added a link to the agent signature in my org, but the emails that are delivered show the markup instead of just a text with a link. This is what our customers are seeing:
Need more info? Visit Our [Help Center](http://my-url.com)
I also see the same in the Zendesk agent, when viewing the ticket.
Is there a way around this?
Cheers!
Instructions should be explicit that all special blocks (code, quote, bullet, list) must be preceded by and followed by a blank line.
@chris - I know how to make use of the markdown. I was asking for the markdown to be properly documented in this article, since it seems like a very simple addition and I'd like to send people in my company to this article as a reference rather than having to completely make my own which could fall out of date
@Pat @Chris Exactly. This is not just a random article in the help center. This *is* the place where a user ends up after clicking the Markdown help link when writing a ticket.
@Jake
You mentioned that HTML was allowed, but how so?
I need to copy formatted HTML content and paste it into the box OR I need HTML code to put in the box?
Thanks!
@Clayton --- You would want to include the HTML code within the box. Any code within the Body of the trigger itself will end up rendering -- you should be good to go from there!
We were customizing the Welcome message sent to new users of our Portal. To add hyperlinks to the message we had to use markdown (but I never used it). I found that to add the hyperlink, instead of embedding HTML I use markdown shown below:
Please access our [Support Portal](http:/www.xxxxx.com) to become familiar with our KB articles.
QUESTION: Will this change in the future? Why was markdown chosen over HTML?
Hey Mary!
Originally, markdown was the only formatting option anywhere in Zendesk, including ticket comments, macros, etc. We didn't start changing over to rich text editors in some parts of the product until more recently. I don't have any insight into the decision to use markdown at the start, but this is why you're required to use markdown in certain areas of the product.
As far as changing the formatting method in the welcome message, the way this part of the product works makes it really complicated to change from markdown to rich text. For the moment, it's not on the road map.
Hi, our team reported that markdown e.g. using hyperlinks on our replies to FB messages do not seem to work. Is that really the case or is there a way to make it work for FB and other social media platforms that we support?
Hey Ramil -
You are correct, markdown and rich text do not work in FB message responses. In order to send a link, your agents will need to send the full url path. Facebook should generate a preview from that link though.
Ah thanks for the info Nicole. Appreciate that. Cheers.
Does this work in help center? not for me
Hey Thomas -
Everything in this article is referring to the Support product, not Guide. Can you tell us more about what you're trying to do so we can find the right answer for you?
Also, I see that this is your first post. Welcome to the Zendesk Community!
Sure, id like to have [code] [/code] blocks in the help center where we can post our documentations.
Hey Thomas!
Can you show me exactly how you're formatting the text? The Code Block should work for you.
seems to work now thank you anyways. I had to copy the text and insert in message to get it working, tapping ` ` ` ` four times didnt work
I'm glad you got it figured out!
Is there an option for subscript or superscript?
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