This article describes how admins can allow agents to add bolding, italics, lists, and other formatting, as well as images and color text, to their ticket comments and macros. Formatting can help make tickets and the email notifications that are sent to requesters easier to read and understand.
Formatting content in the agent interface
The formatting options described in this section are available automatically in the agent interface and are applied to your whole account. Your agents have a combination of formatting options within the same rich content editor, CKEditor. You don’t have to choose between a Rich content editor and a Markdown editor for your agents.
Agents can format from the toolbar:
Agents can also enter Markdown commands:
This editor is available to agents when they create new tickets, add ticket comments, make bulk editing changes to tickets, and update any tickets created from integrations that use the Zendesk Channel Framework.
Both rich content and markdown formatting options are enabled automatically in your account.
Changes from the legacy editors
This section describes some differences between the combined composer experience and the separate legacy editors for rich content and markdown.
- This new editor experience is not available in the macro editor, yet. This feature is planned for later date.
- Rich-content formatting inside code blocks is not supported.
- Using the down arrow key to escape the code block is not supported. To escape a code block, press the Return key three times.
- Image resizing using the up and down arrow keys is not supported.
- Horizontal rule elements will always be on their own line. They cannot be inside of other elements.
- You can only indent a list item if it is at the same level as a previous list item. You can’t indent blockquotes. You can only indent the text inside of blockquotes.
- Using the markdown underline symbol (_) for underlined text is not supported. For example, typing
_Important_
does not appear as Important. You can use underline symbols (_) in addition to asterisks (*) to make text bold or italic. For example, typing_Note_
and__Caution__
appears as Note and Caution.
Turning on or turning off color text
In the Zendesk Agent Workspace, admins can use formatting options to turn color text on or off. This account-wide setting enables admins to control whether agents can add color text and background color to ticket comments or not. See Changing text color. Color text is on by default in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. When color text is turned off, agents will not see a color picker in the text toolbar.
Color text is available only in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, not the standard agent interface.
To turn off color text
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
- In the Comments section, deselect Turn on color text.
Later, if you want to turn color text back on, select Turn on color text.
30 comments
Riko
Hey guys, I'm on Team plan but I don't see this:
Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Settings >Tickets.
What I see is only this - https://www.screencast.com/t/rebv275Py
As per your initial post the Ticket setting should be available for me but it is not. What's up?
0
DJ Buenavista Jr.
Hi Riko,
Thank you for reaching out to Zendesk Support.
In regards to your concern, looking at the screenshot you've provided I can see that you are currently on the Chat page/product. The following option can be located from the Support page, going into Admin > under Settings select Tickets.
Kindly check the screenshot I provided through here: https://prnt.sc/1136mfi
Please don't hesitate to reach back if you have any other questions or concerns. Thank you and have a wonderful day ahead!
Kind regards,
DJ Buenavista Jr. |
Customer Advocacy Specialist | Support@Zendesk.com
0
Riko
Thanks for the answer but I'm still getting trouble.
Please see - https://www.screencast.com/t/sBc3vjWaX7Kv
This is what I see when I go to the support page and as you see there isn't such option as you showed to me.
Please, advise!
R
0
DJ Buenavista Jr.
Hi Riko,
Thank you for the following screenshot, however looking at it, you're still on the wrong page or product. Kindly click on the Zendesk Products icon from the upper right and select Support.
You can also access or login to your Support page through: https://yoursubdomain.zendesk.com/agent/dashboard. Replace the "yoursubdomain" with your account's subdomain. From there, you will be able to access it.
Thank you!
Kind regards,
DJ Buenavista Jr. |
Customer Advocacy Specialist | Support@Zendesk.com
0
Анастасия Куприянова
Hi. The ticket has this feature, but do you plan to add the ability to format text for the chat? Our clients are used to visually highlighting important points and hiding long links.
It is very inconvenient after the last decision to work without the ability to format the text (bold, italic, subparagraphs, link insertion, etc.).
0
Peter Coleman
Hey there,
With the new update, it looks like the only way to tab indent is to use Ctrl+], which is very irritating and annoying, especially as I use Tab to indent in every other text editor.
Is there a way to enable the old and standard method of using Tab to indent text?
Regards,
Peter
3
James Henline
In addition to the issue with using Tab as pointed out above by Peter Coleman, Text Expander apps now do not delete the trigger phrase and force an extra step of removing the trigger phrase from somewhere in the text as the editor seems to hijack some of the clipboard functionality.
This also is causing issues with Grammarly which also uses the clipboard to quickly replace a word.
This change is a breaking change that needs to be fixed ASAP.
At the very least the option to disable the fancy editor and enable Markdown mode needs to be available.
Additionally, after a number of hours with multiple tickets open I have noticed that there are times where the text field will seem to not accept text input when in reality it is accepting it, it is just not showing it for a moment, and then all of a sudden everything I typed shows up as if it were stuck in a buffer somewhere.
I hope this can be fixed soon.
1
Jim Stratton
How does an individual agent (e.g., me) DISable this?
I want to be able to type three dashes in a row without it turning into a horizontal rule, for example.
1
James Henline
From what I can see there is no option to disable the fancy editor either globally or per agent.
1
Naomi Twery
With the new editor, I seem to have lost the option to double-click a word to select it. This is noticeably slowing me down; is there any way to get that back?
0
Jim Stratton
@James Henline - I opened a ticket with them, and you are correct. They confirmed there isn't a way to disable this.
0
Michael Davenport
Is there any plan to re-add this functionality, which the old editor had? Bolding the relevant line in a short code/text snippet was useful for flagging problems, while also presenting them in-context.
4
Вячеслав Скорбеж
Please specify in the article in which channels formatting options are available.
And I have a question. When this option will be implemented for Messaging channels (I understand that text formatting is not supported by some of them, but definitely you can support it in Web SDK and Mobile SDKs)?
1
Jack Sonier
Michael Davenport, 100% agree with you. Please feel free to upvote here https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4457005769882-Cannot-change-formatting-with-code-blocks
0
Signe Kjær Jessen
I do not have this option in our Admin account. I can turn on emoji text replacement etc. but no text coloring - why?
0
Brett Bowser
Can you confirm that your account has been migrated over to Agent Workspace? The color text option will only be available if you have both Rich Text Content enabled and are using Agent Workspace in your account.
Let me know!
0
Signe Kjær Jessen
Hi Brett,
That was it - we weren't migrated to Agent Workspace. It's working now! :)
0
Brett Bowser
0
David Nguyen
Could this be made into an option in the future so we can disable it?
We often need to use special characters in communication with customers.
1
Nick Ryder
Hello,
Please how can we disable the markdown options for underscores (or everything)? We paste in database table names, file names, etc. All which have underscores in them.
When we paste in a file name with underscores (eg. This_Is_A_File.jpg), the underscores are removed and part of my filename is now italics. Not that helpful. Can it be disabled please thank you!
3
Kayla
After this update, I can't change the paragraph alignment. It's troublesome when I need to write something in Arabic AND English and I can't have both paragraphs aligned properly. It only favors ONE alignment style now. It looks very unprofessional and it's frustrating.
1
Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana
Hi Nick Ryder
At the moment it is expected that the underline would make the words in the composer to become italic or bold if it started with the "_". However, I do agree that having the option to turn it off especially since it does impact your team's workflow.
I highly recommend leaving our team your feedback here 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.
Kayla
I checked the composer and the paragraph alignment is still working as intended where you can change it. Could you confirm if this is still a known issue for you and your team?
0
Kayla
Hi Dainne,
This option lets us indent paragraphs, but when Arabic is a right-aligned paragraph, we're not able to also add a left-aligned paragraph for English translation or vice-versa. Unless we're missing something.
0
Jon Daniels
Hi Kayla - that's correct, in the comment editor in Support, you can only have the response be in a LTR or RTL language, there is no way to mix and match - in addition, the rich text comment editor doesn't have the ability to align text, it only lets you indent, like we've been discussing.
Thankfully, being able to align selectively within agent comments is planned feature as per our product manager's comment on this thread: Additional text align options in agent replies
Please share any additional feedback or suggestions on that thread if you feel inclined, we appreciate your input!
0
Dani
0
Максим Насон
Hi , we are also very interested in the possibility of formatting text in messaging. In bold , semi-bold , italics.
Will it be possible to implement this? And when?
3
Вячеслав Скорбеж
Yes, we're awaiting formatting options for messaging channels as we can do in any messenger we use to chat with friends 🙏
1
Nacho Cardozo
Is there any workaround to easily resize images? It is painful to resize using the little square in the corner and dragging the mouse, especially when the images are large and you need to include multiple images - ex. when sending screenshots with steps to take when using an app.
For example, the Discourse composer is great, it gives you 3 size options:

Thanks!
0
Gab
In the event that you have to attach multiple inline (large) images on a ticket, I highly suggest you resize these images prior to attaching them on a ticket. I found a third-party solution for you. You can use this online tool to easily batch resize images: https://www.fotor.com/features/batch-resize-images/
Please note that Zendesk does not provide troubleshooting steps regarding this tool.
I hope this helps!
0
Peter
Are there any instructions on how to add formatting options to an integration using the Zendesk Channel Framework as described in the article? We have successfully integrated our channel but cannot seem to activate formatting options.
These are the only five icons that show up in our editor (notice the "T" is missing):
Many thanks for your guidance.
0