Launched: Rich text formatting for long text fields now live for everyone!

[Katherine_Duh]

New formatting options for long text fields are now available to everyone! That means you’ll be able to use

block quotes

Headers

• ordered lists, unordered lists (bullet points), and checkboxes

bold, italic, strikethrough, and code formatting
and more!

Please note that in order to use the new formatting options, you’ll need to do the following:

1. Open up the field customization menu
2. Select the “Customize field type” option
3. Pick the long text field type (if the field isn’t already long text)
4. Switch on the toggle that says “Enable rich text formatting”
5. Save changes (notice that the field icon changes as well)

There are a couple of interesting new use cases that these new features open up that you might not have expected (for example, did you know that you can now input formatted text in forms?), and you can read more about them in this blog post:

For The Record – 26 Mar 20

4 workflows that take advantage of rich text formatting

Here's four of our favorite use cases for the new formatting options in long text fields.

Thank you to every one of the beta participants for helping move this feature through to completion!

[Craig_Polk]

Hey, that toggle isn’t showing up in my bases. Any ideas why?

[openside]

now that this is live, anyone in need of real, dynamic link fields (which relies on rich text), check out this show & tell:

Finally! Full, Dynamic Links Show and tell

I know many people have been waiting for a HYPERLINK() function. This is not that, but its as close as we can get today. Check out how this simple script can create links that are dynamic and formatted with the text you want instead of the ugly full URL. Explainer Video: Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software Base: Better (Dynamic) Links - Airtable Universe Script: Create fully formatted links in Airtable · GitHub

[Robert_Smith]

Yep. It was the same for me. Just log out, then log back in. Then it’ll show up.

[kuovonne]

It looks like rich text formatting is a subset of markdown. If we are already storing markdown text in a long text field, is there an easy way to convert it to rich text without using a script or the API?

Is there no underline? This seems like a strange omission. Is there no underline because markdown does not have a native method of indicating underline?

[Katherine_Duh]

In case anyone else is having this issue—you should be able to see the toggle by refreshing the page!

[Craig_Polk]

Hi y’all. Thanks for the feedback. The logout and log back in approach did the trick for me.

[XtremeMaC]

this is the best news ever in this climate! I saw it in my table as I’m editing the field type and I was like, no this can’t be real. lol Thanks AirTable!!

[Olpy_Acaflo]

openside:

now that this is live, anyone in need of real, dynamic link fields (which relies on rich text), check out this show & tell:

Many thanks @openside !
This was very useful for me using your Script after learning from it !
Great !

Best,

olπ

[Camila_Cortes_C]

I second this. How can it be done? Same if I paste a text already formatted in markdown, it doesn’t convert it.

[Carlos-Werq]

It would be great if we could center or right justify text within a cell! :slightly_smiling_face: