Is there anyway to get around the loss of indents and in the new Confluence editor?

[Andy Webb]

The new editor is removing indent/outdent which rely on constantly.  Has anyone discovered a work around?

[jim mason · Accepted solution]

the Problems with new Page Editor are many.

the only real work around I know is saving an old page that has the old editor and creating all new pages by copying that one.

Any other method to create a page will use the new page editor.

The only reason I have not left confluence cloud is the ability to use the old page editor still exists

If that is removed at some point, I'll leave Confluence Cloud

While it's easy to identify the failures in the new page editor, it's not the developers or UX designers that fail. it's the Product Manager for releasing that in the product as is.

As a Product Manager, I know there are options to have avoided all the problems created by the way they released the new page editor. It's unfortunate they haven't done better in Product Management.

My bottom line is they at least have not removed the old page editor from existing pages so copying an old page still allows me to use the old page editor.

[Uwe Stahlhofen]

Sorry, but what are we talking about. Indent - Outdent: A major funktion to get a text structured and more readable just has been removed without any notice...

That is, to say it polite, at least unpolite.

Can't say how angry I am!

[Owen]

Tabbing doesn't work when the text is inside a layout - it moves the cursor into the next part of the layout

Tabbing doesn't work when you try to tab text in a table, it moves into the next cell

Tabbing doesn't work for indenting images/tables/code/etc

Indenting would allow me to indent entire sections (including text/images/tables/code blocks/etc).  Especially indenting after headers to help the flow of individual sections to clearly separate distinct sections of documentation.  

Please bring back proper indents, tabbing is inadequate. We need a rich editor, less is not more in this case.

[Rebecca Sullivan]

This is absolutely infuriating: why would they go to the trouble to remove a basic tool for text editing, common to every word processor?  There is no sense to changing conventions that nearly universal. (Also, why does a triple-click select an entire page instead of a paragraph?)

Tools are supposed to make our work easier, not harder.

[Greg Schneider]

This was a weird workaround, but it works - when you are having trouble indenting in Confluence, hit the bullet button; then hit the bullet button again and then hit the indent button and indenting starts working again (this works in Chrome).

[Andy Webb]

Greg, thanks for the advice.  Since there isn't an "indent button" in the new editor I'm wondering what you mean by that term.

[Randy O_Neal]

Yep... this works for me too.  Wow, what a fundamental bug!  If the keys aren't reliably functional, then PLEASE at least provide an indent/undent control at the top of the page a la Word, PowerPoint, or any myriad other document solutions... along with the text alignment, font color, font attributes, etc.  This is really poor form/function.  At least clicking the bullet icon twice restores the functionality.

I'm running the latest Chrome browser on a Windoze 10, version 10.0.19043.1706.

This is rather disappointing this has been a known issue for what... 3 years now?  Yeesh!

[Maria Ng]

LIFESAVER Greg! Thanks.

[Nicole Olsen]

Agghh, this used to work and as of today no longer seems to work for me.

[Christopher Thomas Shea]

Go back to an older page you created that has in/out dent - clone that page and wipe it clean and use as a template - go forward and keep the indent/outdent - I have stopped creating new pages completely because I need this feature every day

[Andy Webb]

I do the same.  Actually I create a template that is blank because otherwise you end up copying any images or other artifacts that then need to be deleted.

[Timothy Nash]

The undo/redo disappears when using the "old" editor. AND Slack notifications cannot be controlled by specifying "Do Not Notify Watcher". SMH! So much for demoing the "features" to their users beforehand. MVP (Minimum Viable Poopoo). I really think software "improvements" like these are effectively just job security for developers than anything else.

[Josh Wolfer]

There are a few workarounds which are ridiculous. To indent text, you can use tab. but then whenever you want to go to the next line and keep it indented, you have to hit shift+enter instead of enter (which starts a new non-indented paragaph).

To add an indent where you normally can't do one with tab (think the traditionally usage of the tab key), on windows you can send an alt+num0,num9 command and it'll take just a tab. I you use autohotkey, I have a script set to send this special tab when I hit control+alt+tab:

^!tab::send {Alt Down}{Numpad0}{Numpad9}{Alt Up}

Again, ridiculous, but these are ways I hack around some of these horrendous UX issues. 

I'm still trying to figure out how to make the font size smaller like before this new interface. 

Also, I wish I could indent things like code via ```. 

[philoye]

Indent is available in the new editor by using the tab key within headings/paragraphs.

[Andy Webb]

Then we are all good.  Thanks Phil.  We have a collective sigh of relief on our end.  In fact, I would say be able to use key strokes is an upgrade.

[Melinda Harrington]

I find this really annoying. There has always been a difference between tabbing and indenting. Using tab to get indenting means I am relearning what those things mean for one application. It's not life changing but I created a document, I selected multiple paragraphs and looked for the indent button on the toolbar. Then went hunting in all the mores and ...s then went hunting on the Internet. Oh, look, you can tab. Tab now indents that entire paragraph. Unlike every other application since the beginning of time where tab only indents the first line of that paragraph. Which is apparently something I can no longer do in an application that is essentially an editor. 

So now, to indent all the paragraphs in that section, I am tabbing each one of them. I literally just hit tab for 20 different paragraphs for just the first section of my document. 

Ah ha. I have now realised that I can select all the paragraphs and then hit tab. Gosh, this is fun. I really wanted to waste this time today.

[Melinda Harrington]

Once I have indented a block of text using tab, I can't figure out how to out-dent. Also, when I tried to indent a bulleted list, tab didn't work. 

[Andy Webb]

Without testing I thought this was an actual solution.  Agree with Melinda that tabbing is not the same as indenting.  It means retabbing every line.  Maybe I missed the Memo that programmers don't like to indent anymore.

[Fran Denis]

I agree.  Tabbing is not the same as indenting.  I converted an existing document, which has indenting. Anything added now has to be tabbed.  Tabbing and Indenting do not give the same spacing, so the spacing looks inconsistent and the document looks messy. The document is too big to redo in the new format. 

When I did tab something, it changed my bullet point.  Another frustration. 

[Deleted user]

There is no outdent process still; once you've indented a list, you're stuck -- and it is September 2020! I bet if you ask, though, Atlassian will recommend a third-party app we can buy that will replace all the features they've removed. They are really good about that.

[Mark Heitner]

Try this ...

tab to indent 

shift+tab to outdent 

[Michelle Swenson]

@Mark Heitner Thank you! You have no idea how long I've searched for this answer. Crazy. 

[Mark Heitner]

@Michelle Swenson Glad I was able to help...now Atlasssian needs to add it back as a menu button!

[Charles Southworth]

Please note that the use case for many users is that /decision [] Action and - bullets, need to be freely mixable in terms of formatting.
(this is the point of a text editor: to display things in a meaningful way for viewers. Aka: why we have css and html in the first place.)

Therefore either the bullets/decisions/actions indents need to be returned to simply exist without a parent item so users can accomplish their goals
OR
Items in confluence need to be part of a system allowing various types to be indented as in a heterogeneous mixture.

Fortunately the outcome is the same for either approach.

Please fix.

[Mark Heitner]

Totally agree with the frustrations here. There should be Indent/Outdent buttons (including in this reply)

From what I read here the way you do it (for now):

Indent --> Tab

Outdent --> Shift+Tab

[Andy Webb]

That is the way to do a tab, but it isn't an indent, it is a tab.  That means you have to keep tabbing anything you add.  Also, for whatever reason, I find the Shift+Tab does not always work in Chrome.  

[Mark Heitner]

Ok, perhaps its how I have been doing it. My issue was with bullets and numbered lists.

I use Chrome, and hasn't hindered me.

I did this with bullets and numbers like below. 

• Text
  
  • Next bullet, tabbed
• Next bullet, Shift tabbed back
  • Next bullet, tabbed
• Next bullet, Shift tabbed back

1. Text
   1. Next bullet, tabbed
      1. Next bullet, tabbed
   2. Next bullet, Shift tabbed back
2. Next bullet, Shift tabbed back

[Deleted user]

How did you create the outdents, then?

[Andy Webb]

I'm not sure who the question is for.  If it is for me, I have just stuck with the old editor.  I can't find any features in the new editor that help me and it has taken away some features I use every time I use Confluence.

[Deleted user]

That makes perfect sense @Andy Webb , and I'm sorry I forgot to tag you.

@Mark Heitner , were you able to outdent the items when necessary? If so, how?

[Mark Heitner]

tab to indent 

shift+tab to outdent 

Try it out.

[Deleted user]

I don't know about anyone else, but lists nested with text do not indent at all, instead aligning themselves with the outermost text. If you Shift+Enter and try to keep a list at the correct nested level, you cannot create a list -- must be manual. And if you try bullets, your only option is to place a hyphen with no space between it and the first character.

It is Dec 2020. What a mess. ACE and TinyMCE editors have more function out of the box than this "highly refined" baloney.

I have been forced to revert to legacy pages for all the missing features. Though apparently, if you pay for the "Pro " cloud offering, you her some features that existed in Cloud pre-2019 back. How kind of them.

[Bret Spangenberg]

How do we outdent if the only way to indent is to use a tab?  

How in the world are we supposed to make lists with indented content under each item?

For example 

1) xxxxxxxxxxx

         *xxxxxx

          *xxxxxxx

2) xxxxxxxxxx

etc

[Melinda Harrington]

TIL The non-intuitive [shift] [tab] works to outdent. 

[John Deschner]

It will only take you out so far, though. A bit frustrating not to have basic outline functions.

[Nate Lamb]

@philoye Will there be an option to indent checklists when editing Global templates and Blueprints as there once was? Or am I missing something? Thanks!

[Zak Laughton]

Hi Andy,

I haven't noticed this yet, but I might not be using indent the same way. Do you have some examples of how the indenting is being impacted on your site?

– Zak

[Andy Webb]

Not yet, but the new editor is completely eliminating indents and I just received an email that we are going to be forced to convert over in the coming weeks.  It is just a disaster for us as we make extensive use of indents on virtually every page for our code documentation and have for years.  I'm at a loss for what we will do.

I'm familiar with the editor from JIRA, which never had indents, which we find clunky, but manageable for the kinds of simple issues we list in JIRA.  In Confluence, it will just kill us.

And further off topic, the new colors make it more difficult to distinguish things, especially for those with any color blindness.  The palate doesn't even have a plain red, blue and green.  

But we can live with bad colors.  The indents is another matter.