Help:Visual Editor

The VisualEditor feature allows users to edit an article quickly and easily. The editing interface will always reflect how the article will look when published.

Clicking Edit on an article will open the VisualEditor. The VisualEditor turns the page itself into the editor area, rather than loading in a separate page. Once loaded, the editing toolbar appears at the top of the article space, and the cursor appears at the beginning of the text.

Availability

VisualEditor is available on the following types of pages (namespaces):

• Article
• User
• Category
• File (but not with files)

Making an edit

Once the editor is open, you can begin writing and modifying the text immediately. The toolbar allows for text modifications like bold, italics, underline, text alignment, and lists. More formatting options are in the A dropdown. To switch between regular paragraphs, headings, blockquotes, or preformatted text, strikethrough, code blocks, font-size controls, superscript and subscript, etc basically click on paragraphs on the toolbar.

To undo a edit or redo use the forward arrow or backwards arrow which can both be located on the far left of the tool bar.

Your browser's spell check function will be used as you enter text; this is most often shown as red underlining on misspelled words.

It's strongly recommended that you add notes in the Describe what you changed field at the bottom before clicking Save, as this will help other editors to figure out what you are attempting to do. You can also hit Show changes for a difference of your changes, show preview to see a preview of your edit before saving.

Creating a link

The toolbar also has the link tool (the chain link icon) that's used to link words or phrases to other pages. To create a link, either:

• Click the link button without selecting any text - you can then type in the intended page destination in the tool, and this will be used as the link text.
• Insert 2 square brackets [[, then type in the intended page destination in the tool.
• Highlight some text then click the link button - this will keep the highlighted text, but you can point the link itself at a different destination.

If the destination article already exists, you can simply start typing the name of the page and a list of suggestions will appear. When you're done, simply hit enter or click elsewhere on the screen to dismiss the dialog. Click the linked text to access the dialog again for further changes.

Hovering over existing links will allow you to edit the display text or modify the link.

Adding elements

Media, and other advanced elements can be added to a page via the Cite icon, shaped like a book, allows references to be added to an article, whereas the Image icon allows for images to be searched for and added to pages. You can also upload images this way, or via the Upload File link on the sidebar which can be found on the left.

Once added, clicking any of these elements will generate an edit dialogue box wherein they may be manipulated. Images can be positioned, captions, borders around them and more. Citations can have their contents modified or added to Cite Grouped references.

For more control over the position and formatting of images, see Image formatting.

Insert

The insert dropdown allows for the addition of more advanced objects to an article:

• Infobox — Allows the user to search through the entire Infobox which the user may insert into the article.
• Template — Allows the user to search through the entire template namespace for one to insert into a page.
• Table — Adds a basic table that can be manipulated.
• Comment — Adds a note visible only to other editors.
• Reference - for adding references from other sites.

Page options

Page options allows you to change the category of the page which can be located at the hamburger menu (3 lines) on the toolbar.

Help

Help includes read the user guide, keyboard shortcuts and leave feedback about this software which can be located at the ? on the toolbar.

Source editing

To change the page to source editing which is the default (old code editor) just click on the pencil on the toolbar.

Youtube demo video

Here's a quick demo of some of the Visual Editor features.