You can make your pages more visually appealing and organize page content by using text effects, paragraph effects, macros, images, tables, etc. To begin, select the "Edit" button for the page.

Text Effects

You can add bold text to make it stand out more on your page. Select the bold button on the toolbar and then type the text to be bolded. You can click on the bold button again to turn "bolding" off. You can also select text that has already been entered on a page and click on the "bold" button to make it appear in a bold font.

You can underline text by selecting the "U" button.

You can italicize text by selecting the "I" button.

When bolding, italicizing, or underlining is in effect, the button will appear to be shaded.

You can change the text color by selecting the drop-down menu next to the "A" button with a blue line under it (the tooltip shows the name "Colour").  You must use one of the pre-defined colors that displays. 

Paragraph Effects

Headings

Answers has six built-in heading types.   The headings are of different sizes and will indent differently in a table of contents macro.    To choose a heading type, select the drop-down arrow in the "Paragraph" box and then click on the heading style:

Note that headings have semantic meaning within HTML and are used by screen readers and search optimizations engines.  You should not use headings just to make text larger or an orange color.

Quotes

You can also insert quotes from the same drop down list.  Quotes are indented and have a vertical line placed in front of them.

"A penny saved is a penny earned."
-- Benjamin Franklin

Indent text

To indent text, click on the "Indent" button on the toolbar and then type your text. You can also click on a line of pre-existing text and click on the "Indent" button (the entire line will indent, even if you don't click at the beginning of the line). You cannot change the amount of space that the text gets indented.

You can remove the indent by clicking on the "Outdent" button on the toolbar.  The "Outdent" button will be greyed out if there is no indented text present.

Justifying and Centering Text

You can left-justify, right-justify, or center text using the buttons on the toolbar. 

You can click the appropriate button and then type the text, or select existing text in a line and click the button (the entire line will be centered or justified).

Panels

Panels enclose the text in a box. To add a panel to a page, click on the "Insert" button on the toolbar and then select "Other Macros." In the search box, enter "panel" to bring up the panel macro and then select it.  You can enter values in the parameters list to change the look of the panel.  As you change the values, click on the "Refresh" icon to display how the panel will look in the "Preview" area of the window.

 For colors, you can use the hexadecimal value for the color (ex: #999999).  For "common" colors, you can use the word for the color (ex: black).

Horizontal Lines

You can insert a solid line that spans the entire page by selecting the "Insert" button on the toolbar and then "Horizontal Rule." 

Lists

Select the appropriate button from the toolbar to add bulleted or numbered lists to your page:

THe "task list" option let you create a list of tasks that people can check off as them complete them.  Note that "task lists" will add prompt you to  use "@mention" to assign the task to  a user.  Since Answers is does not have all of the available social networking plugins enabled, "@mentions" do not generate any email, alert, or other communication to the user.

Insert a macro

Macros allow you to quickly add elements (such as warning boxes) to your page and can be used for generating more complex content structures. To insert a macro, click on the"Insert" button and then "Other Macros." 

The "Macro Browser" will now appear. You can select a category on the left-hand side to narrow your choices of macros, or you can search for a specific macro.

A list of commonly used macros can be found at:  common macros

Insert a picture

Select the "Insert" button on the toolbar and then "Image."

You can use the "Browse" button to find the file on your file system, or you can drag one or more images to the box labeled "Drop Here." You can then select the image displayed in the screen list (the currently selected image will be highlighted in blue) and click on the "Insert" button in the bottom right corner.

A new feature of Answers is the ability to drag an image file directly onto a spot on a page you editing and have the image displayed on the page in that spot (the image file will also be attached to the page).

You can also choose to center the image (or right-justify it), have a border around the image file, or display it as a thumbnail on the page. See this page for creating image effects on a page: image effects

Insert a link

Click on the "Link" button on the toolbar.  The "Insert Link" window will now appear.

Links to Answers pages

If you are linking to a page within answers, you can select "Search" from the options on the left-hand side of the "Insert Link" window and enter words in the Answers page or attachment title. A list of six suggested pages and a list of suggested attachments will appear below the search box. If you want a more complete list of pages, click on the "Search" box and all the pages that fit the search criteria will display. You can limit the search to the current space or leave it on the default of "All Spaces."

You can also select "Recently Viewed" in the left-hand menu to bring up a list of the last 20 Answers pages you viewed (Note: this list is cleared when you log out of Confluence or your Confluence session ends).

Links to Other Web pages

If you are linking to a web page outside of Answers, select the "Web Link" option from the left-hand menu.  Now enter the URL for the site in the "Address" box and the text you want to appear on the page for the link in the "Link Text" box.  Be sure to click on the "Insert" button when you are done.

Links to Attachments

Select "Attachments" from the link menu. If the file has already been set up as an attachment to the page (using Tools and then "Attachments" while you are in viewing mode for the page), it will appear in a list and you can select it.  If the file has not yet been attached to the page, you can browse for the file and upload and link to it.

For all link types, be sure to click on "Insert" when you are done. 

Tables

You can insert a table by clicking the "Table" icon and then drag your cursor to select the number of rows and columns you wish to include in the table: 



Once the table appears, you can click in the cells to add text. While the table is selected on the page, a new toolbar will also appear that lets you modify the table by inserting rows, etc.

See this page for information on using the table toolbar: Modifying Tables