how do I insert line breaks in instructional text

[Pam Ault]

I would like to insert line breaks in my template's instructional text. I've read that Shift+Enter should do the trick, and it does when I am editing the template - but when I save my changes I lose the line breaks. Hoping it was a browser-specific issue I have tried on Chrome/Mac, Chrome/Windows, Safari, and IE11 - no luck!

Any suggestions?

[augomat]

EDITED: Sry - meant to reply to Diego above.

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Hi @Diego ,

thanks for posting the clarification.

But imho, this is still a shame :( Confluence is awesome in principle, but how often does Atlassian just not get the basics right because people don't complain enough about it? This has been extremely frustrating over all the years.

It should be absolutely obvious that you want to explain stuff in your instructional text such that all writers can comply with the idea of what should really go into a section/heading (which is usually much more complicated than just 'surname' or 'address'). And good explanations need format - at the very least line breaks .

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-32700 is the corresponding JIRA issue closed as won't fix because it is 'not meant' to have line breaks. I wonder from which sane knowledge management principle this is meant to not possess any structure.

[Diego]

Hello there! After reading the thread I understand that text that contains line breaks inserted using Shift+Enter do not keep the formatting after page publish.

There is an update that I believe is needed within the thread itself.

One bit that needs an update is the “Instructional Text” part. As of today, this is now called “Placeholder Text”. You can select it via two methods:

Method 01:

1. Type / to bring the macro search
   
   
2. Type placeholder
3. Select the Placeholder macro

Method 02:

1. Click the Insert option at the toolbar
   
   
2. Select Placeholder text

As explained early in the thread, Shift + Enter does not work with Placeholder Text. As soon as Enter is pressed, the Placeholder Text is inserted into the page.

The solution is to placer multiple Placeholder Text, one under the other, simulating line breaks:

You can check more details on Template creation here:

• [Confluence Cloud] Create a template

For Confluence Server this is still called “Instructional Text” and does not support line breaks as well.

The workaround is the same, place multiple Instructional Texts one under the other to simulate line breaks.
While editing the template, the line breaks will display as expected, however, after saving the template the text will be displayed all within the same line.

You can check more details on the creation of templates for Confluence Server here:

• [Confluence Server] Create a template

I hope this clarifies this behavior for anyone looking at this thread today!

[Matthew S Campbell]

Well, at least for me it is not at all clear.  I have 10s of thousands of lines of html documentation I am trying to import into Confluence, and anything with a <br> tag (which is nearly every page) silently fails to import when I hit save.  What can I replace all occurrences of <br> with to preserve the page formatting upon import?

I am hitting the "Edit source '< >'" button and pasting in the HTML...

P.S.  pasting in the html code results in a confluence javascript error.  This feels more like a bug than a feature:

XHRPOST https://confluence-aes.kp.org/rest/sourceeditor/1.0/convert/toEditorFormat [HTTP/1.1 500 44ms]

Uncaught (in promise) SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data

    getError https://confluence-aes.kp.org/s/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e-T/-x3n3cc/9012/ly29vq/4.0.0/_/download/batch/com.mohamicorp.html.source.editor.for.confluence:html-source-editor-resources/com.mohamicorp.html.source.editor.for.confluence:html-source-editor-resources.js:34390

    saveContent https://confluence-aes.kp.org/s/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e-T/-x3n3cc/9012/ly29vq/4.0.0/_/download/batch/com.mohamicorp.html.source.editor.for.confluence:html-source-editor-resources/com.mohamicorp.html.source.editor.for.confluence:html-source-editor-resources.js:34392

..

[Darryl St_ Pierre]

@Pam Ault  - new editor or classic (old)?

I just created a test page with both editors using numbered bullets with three blank lines between each with <shift><Enter>

[Darryl St_ Pierre]

Sorry, just noticed "template". Back to the testing board...

[Darryl St_ Pierre]

And.... just created a template the same way, and got the same results.

Using Chrome on Windows 10 if it matters. Have found that IE/Edge don't play well with Confluence, and just the other day discovered Create from Macro buttons don't work in Firefox...

[Pam Ault]

This didn't work for me unfortunately. The line breaks display in edit mode, but when I save and go back to edit mode, they disappear.

[Darryl St_ Pierre]

Sorry to hear. Given the lack of activity on this thread, you may want to log an issue with Support. Hopefully they can help you out, submit a bug if it's a problem, or direct you to submit an enhancement request if it's not current functionality.

[DPKJ]

@Pam Aultthis is not possible.

A workaround can be to insert multiple block of instructional text one below another.