Pasting in markdown fails to create tasks

Question

When pasting md with tasks (- []/[ ]/[]) it's not converted to atlassian tasks. Other markdown pasting gets converted just fine.

Ilan Schemoul · Answer

I found the related opened issue https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-8586. More than a decade of people begging for the simplest of feature. Unbelievable they just ignore it, when they implement workflows 100 times more complicated in Jira for example.

Isabelle Ruivo dos Santos · Answer

Hi, @Ilan Schemoul

This is a known limitation of the Atlassian editor — when pasting Markdown, most formatting (bold, headers, code blocks, lists) is converted correctly, but task/checkbox syntax (- [ ] and - [x]) is not automatically converted to Atlassian's native task format.

This happens because Atlassian's task items are a proprietary element in their editor (not a standard Markdown construct), so the paste parser doesn't map - [ ] to it.

Workarounds:

* Use the / command — type /task or /action item in the editor to insert a task list natively, then fill in the items manually.
* Paste as plain text first (Ctrl+Shift+V), then convert the lines to tasks using the task list button in the toolbar.
* Use the Confluence editor toolbar — select the pasted lines and click the ✅ task list icon to convert them.

Unfortunately there's no automatic conversion for this specific syntax at the moment. You can submit a feature request on the https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Confluence-questions or vote on existing ones if this is important for your workflow.

Hope this helps...