Indent and outdent content in Confluence Cloud with ease

[#1]

Hi Community, I'm Ethan, a product manager focused on improving the rich-text editor which supports Confluence Cloud, and the wider suite of products in Atlassian’s platform.

I'm here to announce that indent and outdent buttons are now available on the Editor toolbar in Confluence Cloud.

Indenting and outdenting content has consistently frustrated many users new to our editor, according to usability testing. Whilst the existing indentation functionality remains unchanged, we wanted to make indenting and outdenting easier and more intuitive for users unfamiliar with the tab and shift + tab keyboard shortcuts.

What can I indent or outdent with the buttons?

The buttons can indent or outdent the following:

• top-level paragraphs and headings

• bullet lists

• numbered lists

• task lists

Other things worth noting

• The maximum depth of indentation is six levels.

• The buttons are disabled when indent or outdent is not possible.

Stay tuned for future improvements

We are aware of feedback from our more advanced users that they wish more content were indent-able. For example, when content is nested within other content types (e.g. indenting content in a table). We will track feedback following the rollout of these buttons and use that to help determine the priorities that we will target first.

There is more work to do to improve this functionality, so stay tuned! Please leave any comments or questions below to help inform our upcoming work!

And if you're free and willing, book in some time to chat with my team and I to more deeply understand your use cases for indenting content, and the challenges you face formatting content efficiently to inform our upcoming iterations. You can book in a meeting at a time that best suits via this calendly link: https://calendly.com/eyew/30min   

Thanks all and stay safe,
Ethan

[Srinatha T]

Nice.! Thanks for sharing this  @Ethan Yew .!

[Logi Helgu]

Interesting...I apparently have no need for this...and don't even know why I would like to indent since I only use it on bulletin points...I do recall having images within bulletin points that I've put in a new line (Shift+Enter) and they stuck out...and wanted to shift that...guess this will help...good to see improvements thought I could have thought of other things I would have prioritized ;)

[Gaby]

The function will certainly find an application in our company. THANKS.

Question: Can the spacing of the tabs be set or changed?

Greeting - Gaby

[Ethan Yew]

@Logi Helgu you'd be surprised how many people weren't aware that indenting and outdenting content was possible in the Editor! Rest assured this isn't the only thing our team has been working on, as we balance delivery of both large and small(er)* rock initiatives. Would love for you to share with my team and I what other things you would have prioritised ;) https://calendly.com/eyew/30min 

*Unfortunately nothing is ever truly "small" when working on Rich-Text Editors (^_^)"

[Ethan Yew]

@Gaby Great to hear this new addition is of use to you and your company! As for the spacing of the tabs, this is not something that can currently be set or changed. Curious to better understand what your use case would be for configuring the spacing?

[Gaby]

Hi Ethan,

thank you for your feedback.

Yes, it would be great if we could define the tabs / tab spacing ourselves, so user individually, also and especially using macro layout.
Example 1:
Layout = 3 columns
Column 1 = 2 tabs - spacing medium
Column 2 = 0 tabs
Column 3 = 3 tabs - spacing small

Example 2:
Layout = 2 columns
Column 1 = 2 tabs - spacing large
Column 2 = 2 tabs - 1 tab left and tab right

Ultimately absolutely individual.

I myself am an advocate of Confluence and Atlassian and with it knowledge and exchange without separate files.

Greeting - Gaby

[Ethan Yew]

Hi @gaby I'm having some difficulty following what you're describing here sorry (^_^)" if it's easier to explain this over a call, feel free to book some time with my team and I using my Calendly meeting link: https://calendly.com/eyew/30min 

Or alternatively, feel free to share a recording of what you're describing to my email: eyew@atlassian.com :) 

[Ilidio Faria]

Hello @Ethan Yew 

Why the indent and outdent is not appearing in my Jira Cloud (ecom4isi.atlassian.net)

Regards,

Ilídio

[Barry Jack]

Hello @Ethan Yew 

I'm glad this functionality is here, but it would really be great to support indenting (or using bullet points on) page elements like expander macros or code block macros - as it was in Confluence Server/Data Center.

Regards,

Barry

[deisenberg]

@Ethan Yew is there any plan to actually fix indenting the whole list without the first bullet being locked to the left-most margin? I have headers that are not bulleted, but would like the list to start one tab IN, not in-line with its header.

This fix has been promised for literally years, and a few times y'all "told" us it was fixed, closed out the tickets, but in fact, the dev team did NOTHING to fix it.

There were at least 3 duplicates listed on the bug that was the "actual" one being worked on. All were closed, none fixed it.

[Cortlandt _]

RE: Barry Jack Jun 12, 2023  post

The animation shows the indent in action.
For the bullet point labeled "A"  it shows that the top level bullet point can't be indented.    I've tried to do this many times and wished it would work.

It doesn't work on a normal text paragraph or within a layout box.

Why indent a heading but not allow the bullet or numbered text below the heading to be indented!   That often pretty much eliminates the value of indenting headings!

Again it seems like a "improvement" that only works half the time.
To use indent you have to understand that it often won't work when need it to -- so when I train people on the feature I have to start with the admission that it's a (to use polite words) sub-par and incomplete feature.

I've got to think that your writers know about these limitations and the questions and objections that I have others have raised -- but believe it's better to pretend everything is great.   That strikes me more as misleading marketing rather than a serious attempt to provide technical documentation.

[Cortlandt _]

Indent and outdent content in Confluence Cloud with ease?

Seems like the first comment should be from someone at Confluence to address the seemingly obvious limitations.
Limitations that belie the "at ease" idea in the title.

[Ruben Lado]

Hello.

The Indent Tab cannot be used to indent normal text inside a Tabs macro. Could this be fixed?

Thanks.

[Guess_ Brandi N_]

you still have to indent the ENTIRE paragraph, but what if we want to indent only the first line of a paragraph?

[Dan Iveson]

Why would you limit the number of indents to 6?? For those of using Confluence to write technical documents and describe complex logic 6 indents is not enough. Why limit it in the first place?

[Richard Szabo]

Hi @Ethan Yew  when can we expect the ability to indent a picture? It's been two years since this posting. 

[Richard Szabo]

Hi @Ethan Yew  When can we expect the ability to indent a picture? It's been two years since this posting. Perhaps there is a simple way to do that which I am missing.   MS Word has had this functionality for decades. 

[Richard Szabo]

Hi Ethan, when can we expect the ability to indent a picture? It's been two years since this posting. Perhaps there is a simple way to do that which I am missing.