The help center editor provides toolbars and shortcuts that you can use to format your articles and content blocks. This is not the same editor that is used in community posts.
The following table describes the toolbar options that are available for the article and content block editors. Because the tools vary depending on whether you are editing articles or content blocks, the table identifies each tool with a "Yes" or “No” in the editor columns to identify the editor that supports that tool.
Note: You can also format content blocks with Markdown, a simple markup
language that you can use to add formatting to plain text. See Formatting text with Markdown.
Toolbar button | Name | Action | Article editor | Content block editor |
---|---|---|---|---|
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Heading selector | Select the HTML heading you want to apply to the text. | Yes | Yes |
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Formatting selector | Select the formatting that you want to apply to the text (bold, underline, italic, or block quote). | No | Yes |
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Bold | Bold or unbold text. | Yes | Yes |
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Underline | Underline or remove underline from text. | Yes | Yes |
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Italic | Italicize or remove italics. | Yes | Yes |
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Block quote | Apply block quote styling to text. Block quotes are set apart from the main text as a paragraph with visual styling. | No | Yes |
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Size selector | Increase or decrease font size. | Yes | Yes |
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Text color selector | Change text color using the color selector. | Yes | Yes |
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Text background color selector | Change text background color using the color selector. | No | Yes |
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Code block | (Content block editor) Creates a block of pre-formatted code. Each code block
is assigned a specific programming language and supports basic editing tools (for
example, changing the line indentation). (Article editor) Creates a block of plain text that can be used to represent code. |
Yes | Yes |
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Code block type selector | Select or change the programming language that you want to apply to the code block. | No | Yes |
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Bulleted list | Create or remove a bulleted list. | Yes | Yes |
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Numbered list | Create or remove a numbered list. | Yes | Yes |
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Align/indent selector | Align text left, center, or right; indent or outdent text. |
Yes | Yes |
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Insert/edit link | Create or edit a link and link text. You can link to a URL, heading in the article, or another article. See Inserting links. | Yes | Yes |
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Insert image | Insert an image using the file browser. The image file size limit is 20 MB. See Inserting images. | Yes | Yes |
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Add video | Insert a video that is hosted on a supported service. See Inserting videos. | Yes | No |
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Source code | View or edit the HTML source code.
Note: You can use HTML blocks to work with unsupported
source code in content blocks. See Using HTML blocks to edit code in content
blocks.
|
Yes | Yes |
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Enhance writing (requires the Advanced AI add-on) | Use generative AI to enhance the selected content (expand, simplify, make more friendly, or make more formal). | Yes | Yes |
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Table | Create or modify tables using the menu options. | Yes | Yes |
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Insert content block (Enterprise plans only) |
Insert a content block into the article. See Creating and inserting reusable information with content blocks. | Yes | No |
20 comments
Diego Garcia
Hi Zendesk Team,
According to SEO best practices, just one H1 header should appear on each page. (For article purposes that H1 should be the Article Title and that is assigned in the template article.hbs)
The editor toolbar allows anyone to put 1 and more H1 headers. There is a way to remove H1 from the headers options in the dropdown list?
4
Dave Dyson
Hi Diego –
That's a really good point. For visibility, would you mind posting to our Feedback on Guide topic, using this template to format your post? That way our product team will see it, and other users can upvote and/or add their own comments to it. Thanks!
0
Prerana Gupta
Hi Zendesk Team,
Is there a way to have a customized content template for all the existing Knowledge base articles? For instance, headings and sub-headings having different font sizes and colors....
We want to update all existing articles with a standard global template...
3
Kenneth Nuckols
Is there a way to do "split-window" html editing in Guide?
Because everything that renders in Zendesk is governed by templates and style sheets, it would be really handy to split the article editing window into a WYSIWYG and an HTML window (instead of one or the other) and see how your edits are rendered in place with in real time. Swapping back and forth is a pain because it always goes to the top of the page and you have to scroll down if you are making a change to a piece of code in a table or a list, or if you tweaking an image tag, etc.
11
Annie Baker
Hey Zendesk,
I see that you can change the color of text but is there a way to highlight the text? When you are looking to bring attention to information I find it easier to read text that is highlighted instead of colored font. It could also cause issues for customers that have vision impairments such as color blindness.
Thank you
2
Joel Sandi
One ubiquitous and critical button in pretty much all other WYSIWYG tool bars is confoundingly missing here: clear formatting. Since so much of our documentation starts elsewhere for necessary collaboration -- especially Google Docs -- it is incredibly tedious to have to deal with this in html to remove carryover artifacts when something is directly pasted over (which is of course super common).
6
F. Keijmes
Hi all, are you planning to add more toolbar actions to the Content Block editor?
We're looking for adding pictures and tables (also possibly video) to the content blocks, which is currently not possible.
You then could create content blocks as nice looking headers and footers for articles.
2
Dave Dyson
For the best visibility to our product team, would you mind posting your feedback to our Feedback - Help Center (Guide) topic, using this template? Thanks!
0
Tsuyoshi Yoshizawa
Are there any shortcut keys assigned to Headings? If I am a Mac user, I would like to use Cmd+Option+number to change to any Headings like in Google Docs.
0
Gabriel Manlapig
Hi Tsuyoshi,
Yes, you can use keyboard shortcuts to help format your knowledge base articles. Below are the available keyboard shortcuts and their functions.
For reference, please see screenshot below:
For more information, please see below article:
Keyboard shortcuts for formatting knowledge base articles
I hope this helps!
0
Tsuyoshi Yoshizawa
Gabriel Manlapig Thank you for the response.
I tried to enter Ctrl + Alt + number, but it doesn't work on Chrome.
Does Alt means Option key? Mac is using Option instead of Alt, so I recommend Zendesk updates to the key.
In additional, I would like Zendesk to support the Cmd key as the same shortcut key.
My personal feeling is that the Command key is more familiar to Mac users than Option. And it's the same operation as Google Docs, so it's not confusing across services.
0
Gabriel Manlapig
Hi Tsuyoshi,
I also tried this using Ctrl + Alt + number on Chrome and it is working just fine.
For reference, please see sample GIF below:
And yes, Alt means Option key on Mac, this means that the keys that you will need to press is Ctrl + Option (Alt) + number.
We understand that the Command key is more familiar to Mac users than Option, and that's a really good point. You can spin-up a feature request in the Feedback on Guide section about this topic using this template to format your post. Thanks!
1
PAUL
Hey all,
Does anyone know if it's possible to hide any/some icons in the toolbar? Eg. "add video" because links should be used instead and would not want to tempt the content managers to use the built-in feature. Maybe with some custom code?
Fingers crossed! :D
0
Tsuyoshi Yoshizawa
Gabriel Manlapig Sorry for the reply.
> I also tried this using Ctrl + Alt + number on Chrome and it is working just fine.
I just checked and it works as expected. I understand regarding the feedback.
Thanks!
0
Geoff
Where should I be looking to add components to the article rich text editor? I'd like to add abbreviations via a button and with a modal—similar to how the insert/edit link button works.
0
Hiedi Kysther
Hi Geoff,
Are you planning to use HTML for that? If yes, this might help: How can I format the text of the article with the source code?
Hope this helps!
0
Matthew Rawls
Is there a way to enable this same WYSIWYG edit toolbar into my Community post toolbar? I'd like to embed videos in Community posts, but that WYSIWYG has a lot less options.
0
Elaine
Zendesk's Community post toolbar does not offer the same WYSIWYG edit toolbar as the ticket editor. While the Community post toolbar may have fewer options, you can still embed videos using markdown or HTML code.
To embed videos in Community posts, you can utilize markdown or HTML code to achieve the desired functionality. While we don't currently have a feature to enable the same WYSIWYG edit toolbar in the Community post toolbar, I recommend using the markdown or HTML code mentioned earlier to embed videos directly into your Community posts.
If you need further assistance or have any other questions, please to contact our Support team. We're here to help!
0
Helen
Is there a way to insert dynamic content into a Knowledge Article?
0
Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana
Hi Helen
Unfortunately not at the moment. I encourage you to create a new post in the General Product Feedback topic in our community to engage with other users who have similar needs and discuss possible workarounds. Conversations with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for product managers to review when they go through roadmap planning.
Specific examples, details about impact, and how you currently handle things are helpful for our product teams to understand the full scope of the need when working on solutions. You may also want to review the Product feedback guidelines and how to write an effective feedback post.
0