In Confluence Cloud, formulas are usually rendered through a Marketplace app, and most of these apps take LaTeX. So writing a formula means writing LaTeX by hand, which is fine right up to the moment you need one you can't recall from memory.
This post covers four practical ways to add LaTeX in Confluence when you don't know the syntax, and none of them require leaving the page you're working on.
TL;DR
All four ways are part of LaTeX Math for Confluence by Stiltsoft, a Forge app for Confluence Cloud that our team builds, and one of several math apps on the Atlassian Marketplace. Which way you reach for depends on what you're missing:
- Describe the formula in plain words and let the AI assistant write the LaTeX. Best when you can say what you want, but not write syntax.
- Take a ready-made formula from the Most popular tab and change the letters. Best for standard, frequently used equations.
- Search for the command by its everyday name — type "square root", get
\sqrt. Best when only one command name is missing. - Click the symbol on the virtual keyboard. Best for a symbol you'd recognize instantly but could never name.
1. Describe the formula and let AI write it
If you can say the formula out loud but not write it, say it and let the app do the typing.
The Ask AI button sits in the formula editor toolbar. You type a description the way you'd say it to a colleague — "integral from 0 to infinity of e to the minus x squared", or simply "Pythagorean theorem" — and the LaTeX appears in the Syntax field with the rendered formula above it. This shipped in version 5.0.0 of LaTeX Math for Confluence by Stiltsoft.
You see the rendered result before you save, so you can tell straight away whether the description was understood. And what you get back is editable syntax, so if one part of the formula is wrong, you correct that part instead of describing the whole thing again.
You can also write the description in whatever language you think in: English, German, or Italian all work; the resulting LaTeX is the same.
2. Take a ready-made formula and change the letters
If the formula you need is one that everybody uses, there is no reason to assemble it from parts.
The Most popular tab of the symbols keyboard holds whole formulas. One click puts the complete equation in the editor, and you change the variables to match your case.
3. Search for the command by its everyday name
Often, the only thing between you and the formula is a single command name.
The search box inside the keyboard accepts either a LaTeX command or a plain English word. Type "square root" and you get \sqrt. Type "sum" and you get \sum. It works the other way too: if you half-remember a command, type what you have and see what comes back.
4. Click the symbol you can't name
Some symbols you would recognize anywhere and could never name. For those, clicking is faster than describing: you find a symbol on the keyboard rather than trying to recall \partial.
The LaTeX Symbols Keyboard is grouped into four tabs: Most popular, Numeric, Symbols, and Greek Letters, so you're choosing from a short list rather than scrolling through hundreds. Holding a symbol shows its variants.
This is the right tool for one or two symbols inside a formula you are otherwise typing yourself.
Which of the four should you use?
It depends on how often you write formulas. If you write them every day, the keyboard will cover almost everything, and you'll rarely need to describe a formula in words. If you write one a quarter, it will be the other way around: describing it in plain language is faster than relearning syntax you'll probably forget again by next quarter. Teams usually contain both kinds of people, which is the real argument for having all four available rather than picking one.
All four ways exist so that not knowing some LaTeX commands doesn't stop you mid-sentence. If you'd like to dig deeper into the syntax for the cases you run into most, we've written those up separately in this community:
