how do I indent text?

Mike January 29, 2018

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

 

How can I indent my text?

11 answers

1 accepted

2 votes
Answer accepted
Mike January 31, 2018

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 February 8, 2018

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
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February 16, 2024

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.

25 votes
Deleted user September 4, 2019

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

6 votes
Cheryl May 4, 2021

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 October 25, 2021

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! 

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gaborgluck
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February 7, 2022

I agree...

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Evan Cutler April 27, 2022

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.

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5 votes
Erix Pizano
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June 7, 2019

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.

4 votes
Mo Dickson May 9, 2021

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
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May 10, 2021

You just gave me another reason for not using Confluence. 

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1 vote
Michele Colacino
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June 13, 2023

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.

1 vote
Henry Wythe
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October 28, 2021

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

Kevin Landel
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April 27, 2022

 

Agree!!!

0 votes
Marc Isikoff October 3, 2022

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.

0 votes
Dirk Schiller July 21, 2022

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.

0 votes
Deleted user February 15, 2022

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.

Screenshot 2022-02-15 120532.png

0 votes
AnnWorley
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January 29, 2018

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 January 29, 2018

see below

Mike January 29, 2018

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

Indent_disabled.PNG

Mike January 29, 2018

We are on the cloud:

url.PNG

Mike January 29, 2018

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:

 

newBlankPage.PNG

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AnnWorley
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January 29, 2018

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
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March 5, 2020

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? 

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Lyubko
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June 7, 2020

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

 

  1. text
    1. text
    2. text
  2. text
  • text
    • text
    • text
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Stephen Chisholm June 19, 2020

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).

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Hayden Clark
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August 12, 2020

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

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Mayank
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August 19, 2020
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Stephen Chisholm August 19, 2020

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.
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Malcolm B. Anderson
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November 17, 2020

@ 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.

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William Kim
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December 2, 2020

thanks @Lyubko for providing the correct answer i needed 

Park, Andrew
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May 7, 2023

This remains broken @AnnWorley 

Indent Edit Page.pngIndent Published Page.png

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
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July 21, 2023

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
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May 14, 2024

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.

 

 

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