how do I indent text?

[Mike]

I have created a page and the Indent / Outdent buttons are greyed out?

How can I indent my text?

[Mike · Accepted solution]

There is no answer to my question other than:

I tried on my Cloud instance and saw the same behavior. It looks like it has been that way since December 2017: Ability to Indent block elements such as paragraphs, headings, and block quotes

[Jason Tolotta]

I created a Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey script.
It re-enables the indent and outdent buttons while editing.
confluence-indent-enable.js

I big thank you to Ricky Vincent that provided the solution for the script loading issue in CONFCLOUD-58656

I just use the TAB key to indent and SHIFT + TAB keys to outdent now and I just live with the rest of the components I cannot indent/outdent.

[Max Fu]

TAB and SHIFT+TAB. That's it.

I dont understand why such an accurate and concise answer received so few thumb ups.

All other answers are just blah-blah-blah with little useful info.

[Deleted user]

Every "text edit widget" on the web i have used since 1999, has an "indent" feature as standard... please fix this!

[Cheryl]

Atlassian decided to remove a lot of heavily used functionality in Confluence eg Wiki markup, text indents, table sizing etc and replace it with nothing despite numerous customer complaints.

Also many of the existing macros don't work the same way anymore, such as TOC and Children display. Pages in the old format now have formatting messed up and the links all need to be recreated.

Obviously Atlassian has a lot to learn about keeping their customers happy and sending notifications about loss of functionality.

[Evan Cutler]

I can tell you, I'm new here, and bringing in Word docs, only to lose most formatting is very frustrating.

Indenting paragraphs multiple levels is how we make long technical documentation sections far easier to read and parse.  I'm amazed this feature was pulled out of confluence pages! 

[gaborgluck]

I agree...

[Evan Cutler]

I can do some indenting now, but it's very awkward to indent a paragraph, but not be able to indent the bulleted or numbered list below it.

This is so 1978.

[Erix Pizano]

Altassian Team: Cannot claim you offer a field where to write specifications if you can't indent, you have speech recognition in the description field of the story..., can you please just fix that basic shortcoming? Version 1 and just about any other tool let's you.

[Mo Dickson]

Well, I will be moving away from using Confluence for instructional text if it can't even do an indent. That is completely unacceptable and unworkable. 

[Krishnan Srinivasan]

You just gave me another reason for not using Confluence. 

[Michele Colacino]

Here's what worked for me:

Using MS Word (Office 365), format your text using the Multilevel List (not the numbering list). Copy/paste your multilevel list into the Jira field that accepts rich text formatting (not always a given where I work).

The indents were retained.

I still prefer Jira's indent and outdent feature better.

[Marc Isikoff]

Since cloud JIRA uses wiki text, like *f* for bolded f, try using : for an indent, and :: for double indent, etc. or use # and ## for numbering and sub numbering.

[Dirk Schiller]

I found out the moment you paste text with bullet points TAB to indent doesn't work because it moves the Focus to the `Save` Button. Instead you need to save first the Description after you pasted your Text and then you need to edit it again in order to be able to use TAB for a bullet list to indent different sections.

[Deleted user]

I know this is an old post, but maybe I can provide another option for folks who appreciate and miss some of the functionality in the old editor.

If you're lucky enough to have a page created or last edited prior to the change in 2017, try copying it.  The copied page should retain the old version of the editor.  Copy it out to a template page somewhere and you can just use that to spin off new pages using the old editor.  Of course, all this until Atlassian forces all of the old pages to convert or restricts this method.

EDIT: Actually just noticed that the "Legacy editor page" template is still available when you create a new page.

[Henry Wythe]

This is the most insanely stupid anti-feature I have ever seen!

[Kevin Landel]

Agree!!!

[AnnWorley]

The indent/outdent buttons will be greyed out if the cursor is in a field that cannot be indented or outdented. When you first create a page the cursor is in the Title field, which is one of those fields.

If you have the cursor on a blank spot on the page, then are the buttons enabled? Feel free to attach a screen shot if that will help show the issue.

Do you know if you are on Cloud Confluence or if it's server, what version? The version is usually at the bottom of each page, "powered by Atlassian <product, version>".

[Mike]

see below

[Mike]

I edit the page and place the cursor where the red line is, notice I can "outdent", but the "indent" button is grayed out.

[Mike]

We are on the cloud:

[Mike]

Here is a New Blank Page, my cursor is at the END of the text ...

( I am NOT editing the title of the page )

notice indent and outdent are grayed out:

[AnnWorley]

I tried on my Cloud instance and saw the same behavior. It looks like it has been that way since December 2017: Ability to Indent block elements such as paragraphs, headings, and block quotes

We disabled the ability to create new indents. Your existing pages with indented text are safe and you can still edit this text and outdent it, but you just won't be able to indent further.

Please comment or vote on the suggestion ticket linked above to communicate directly with the development team. Doing so will add you to notifications, and help emphasize your use case.

[Gracie]

This ticket has been closed but it is not possible to indent bulleted lists in the editor today. Is this because of the update in page editors or was this never fixed? 

[Lyubko]

Just use Tab for indent and SHIFT Tab for outdent, works fine.

1. text
   1. text
   2. text
2. text

• text
  • text
  • text

[Stephen Chisholm]

It works when entering comments,  but when entering text in the "Description" field when "creating" an issue, indent is not possible (hitting <tab> or <shift><tab> does not work).

[Hayden Clark]

On Chrome, Tab simply moves to the next field. So, no indents at all. WTF?

[Mayank]

I know it's a pain but try https://phelix.atlassian.net/secure/WikiRendererHelpAction.jspa?section=lists

[Stephen Chisholm]

Like most ticketing systems & processes for larger companies now-a-days ... raising a request or "ticket" is simply a delay tactic.

Atlassian will eventually fix this ... but on their own schedule.

BTW - I tried to indent the paragraph below but can't.

They have to close the request as soon as possible to meet or exceed their "Quality of Service" or "Service Level Agreements" because they are being "measured" by it (cuz it's a tangible metric) ... and the team lead's / managers / directors / VPs have bonuses based on it.  The actual "concern" for the customer service piece has been non-existent for years.

• I'll get a prompt response from a CSA because of the above comments, but I will not reply because I already know the "canned" response they will provide and I've been here many times in the past.

[Malcolm B. Anderson]

@ Maynak I know it's a pain but try https://phelix.atlassian.net/secure/WikiRendererHelpAction.jspa?section=lists

This would be an acceptable answer if I could get rid of the bullets.

I can always use 8 spaces to get approximately a 5 character tab
        but this is a horrible user experience.

[William Kim]

thanks @Lyubko for providing the correct answer i needed 

[Park, Andrew]

This remains broken @AnnWorley 

The top picture is the indent I created within the center column in a Layout macro on the Edit page. But once I publish the page, the indent disappears no matter how many times I indent the paragraph. The paragraph in question should remain indented but does not. Is this a formatting issue or a bug? 

[Oscar Kramer]

Indenting not enabled (button grayed out) inside Numbered Headings block. When I set the cursor outside the block, the indent button is enabled.

[Richard Price]

Hi,

This worked for me:

To indent a section of text from a paragraph in Jira, position the cursor at the far left of the first line you want to offset.

Enter a greater-than symbol and a space (“> “). The lines of text below that point, down to the first hard return, will indent slightly.

A vertical grey line in the left margin will offset the block without taking up a lot of space.

To resume typing paragraphs with a normal margin, click the Enter key twice.