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[SOLVED] Formatting options for Long Text

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Arlo_Haskell
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect
Status: Launched

I would love to see basic text formatting options for the long text field. At a minimum: bold and italic formatting would be a huge help.

I would like to use long text fields to store short bios for writers. But without the ability to have italic formatting, I can’t properly format the titles of their books.

The markdown formatting tools available in this Airtable community message editor would be perfect.

154 Comments
Andrew_Enright
9 - Sun
9 - Sun

Bullets should be doable using unicode characters/glyphs and line-breaks via \n, particularly in roll-up fields that leverage arrays.

Colleen_Bates
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Please please please do this. We have been slowly moving most of our business operations to Airtable, but we are book publishers, so it is essential that we be able to format text, especially italics, bold, and accents.

Eduardo_Pimente
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

+1 !!

I just started using this app and I’m loving it!

But rich text is already missing, and the workaround I’m trying to do is not funny at all, lol.
Bold, italic and font size, please!

Ron_McCord
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

and highlighting!!! would be awesome

Brad_Hinson
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

OMG, yes +++ on a markdown field - that would be a game changer

Chris_Neff
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Yes please! Markdown support would do wonders!

Ammon_Martin
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

+1
Does putting “+1” in the comments actually accomplish anything?

Kirsten_Jack
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

I also really need to be able to use markdown, as we use this to manage client rquests, but can’t then process the text they send to us! So we’re stuck with them sending us text in word docs which seems non-sensical and a shame given how many other services offer formatted text

Katherine_Duh
Airtable Alumni (Retired)

Hey Ammon! Great question about +1s. We take all input into consideration and definitely look at the number of Heart s on a topic to measure Community interest. So, to make sure your voice gets heard in support of a feature, go ahead and click that Heart !

In general, we get substantially more value out of learning what specific use cases you have in mind for a particular feature, or specific elements that you would like included in a feature, than we do from a comment that just says “+1” (which is why “+1” comments are discouraged in the community guidelines). +1 comments also aren’t easily quantifiable for us in the way that Heart ing the initial post is.

With more specific comments, our dev team can keep your use cases top-of-mind when working on a feature. Once a feature is in development, we can invite users who have commented with specific use cases in mind to be part of the beta so that we can collect more detailed feedback from them.

Hope this helps, and while we will post again in this thread when we have relevant updates to share, as always, you can keep an eye on the What’s New page to see what new features have been released for general availability recently.

Arlo_Haskell
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Thanks for clarifying, @Katherine_Duh!

As the original poster here (118 Heart 's and over 5k views later :winking_face: ), I’ve noticed that fellow commenters in the literary and book/magazine publishing worlds share our specific use case. We all want italics and bold formatting (at a minimum) so we can use Long Text fields to hold multi-paragraph rich text. This could then be copied/pasted or accessed by other means into other applications, simplifying various content-creation workflows that rely on formatted text.

Common needs for italicized text include: book titles, scientific terms, and phrases from Latin or other foreign languages. Bold formatting is primarily useful for headings, i.e. an author’s name before their bio. Other commenters outside the literary world seem to need this functionality for product titles and descriptions.