This page describes the wiki markup used on some administration screens in Confluence Cloud.

Wiki markup is useful when you want to do one of the following:

• Create links using the Advanced tab of the Links Browser.

• Add custom content to the header or footer of a space.

• Insert a block of wiki markup (or markdown) into the Legacy editor. (Choose Insert > Markup.) Note: the new editor doesn’t support markup.

Can I insert markdown?

Confluence Cloud supports inserting content in markdown. This is often used in ReadMe files. See Keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete for some examples.

To insert markdown in the Legacy editor:

1. Choose Insert > Markup. 

2. Select Markdown. 

3. Type or paste your text - the preview will show you how it will appear on your page. 

4. Choose Insert.

As with wiki markup, Confluence Cloud will convert your markdown to the rich text editor format. You will not be able to edit your content using markdown.

Headings

There are six heading sizes, h1 through h6. To format text as a heading, prefix the text with the name of the heading you want followed by a period:

Lists

Wiki markup allows you to create bulleted or numbered lists, and is flexible enough to allow a combination of the two list types.

Bulleted lists

To create a bulleted list, type the asterisk followed by a space before each item on the list. Add more asterisks to create sub-items. Each additional asterisk adds another level.

To get square bullets instead of round ones, use hyphens - instead of asterisks *.

Numbered lists

To create a numbered list, type the hash # followed by a space before each item on the list. As with bulleted lists, the number of hashes determines the level of the item.

Mixed lists

You can combine these methods to create mixed numbered and bulleted lists as shown below.

Tables

You can create simple tables using Confluence wiki markup, with columns separated by the pipe | and rows separated by line breaks. To give a cell a gray background, add a second pipe.

For example, the following input:

Will produce this output:

You can also create tables using the column and section macros. This method gives you more control over the size of table cells, but doesn’t produce highlighted cells. For more information, see Table Type 2 in this reference document.

Embedded lists

You can use Confluence wiki markup to embed lists in tables, as in the following example:

The code above will produce the following table:

Advanced table formatting

You can add color and other formatting options to your table using the panel macro and certain third-party apps (if your Confluence Cloud administrator has installed them on your site).

Text effects

You can also set the color of your text. For example, if you type {color:red}your text{color}, the phrase “your text” will appear in red.

Breaks

You can add paragraph breaks, line breaks, and horizontal rules in Confluence wiki markup.

Paragraph breaks

In Confluence wiki markup, paragraphs are created from any continuous line of text. To create paragraph break, insert two carriage returns after the paragraph text. This is the equivalent of wrapping text in a set of <p></p> tags in HTML.

Line breaks

There are two ways to create a line break within paragraph text:

• Implicitly, by entering a single carriage return

• Explicitly, by entering two consecutive backslashes \\

These methods are equivalent to separating text with the <br> tag in HTML.

Most of the time, explicit line breaks aren’t required and a single carriage return is enough. However, they are necessary when you need to break up text in a single list item, as in the example below:

To use more than one explicit line break in a row, separate each one with a space, e.g., \\ \\ for two line breaks.

Horizontal rule

To create a horizontal line across the width of your page or content block, type four dashes in a row ---- at the beginning of a line, then press enter or space.

Make sure that the dashes are on a separate line from the rest of the text.

Links

Confluence wiki markup lets you add hyperlinks to text in certain administration screens. The table below illustrates the syntax for adding links.

Confluence Cloud treats headings as anchors, so you can link to headings with the following pattern: [spacekey:pagename#headingname]

For each of the links in the table above:

• You can prepend a link alias, so that alternate text is displayed on the page. For example: [link alias|pagetitle#anchor]

• You can append a link tip, which appears as a tooltip. For example: [pagetitle#anchor|link tip]

Images

You can display images from attached files or remote sources.

For any image, you can specify attributes of the HTML image tag in Confluence wiki markup in a comma-separated list appended to the URL. In the example below, the image will be aligned to the right of the page with 4 pixels of whitespace above and below:

!image.gif|align=right, vspace=4!

The following HTML image tag attributes are available: