Use the Moodle Text Editor | UNSW Teaching Staff Gateway

Overview

The text editor is a large field where you enter content that will display within your Moodle course—for example, on the course home page, in forum posts, in lessons or in books.

This content can consist of text, but it can also include links, emoticons, images, videos, maths symbols and tables.

When to use

Whenever you enter significant amounts of content in your Moodle course, or interact with your students within the course, you'll need to use the text editor. It's best to familiarise yourself with all its functions early, so that you can take full advantage of its features, and use it efficiently.

Benefits

Being aware of the full range of the text editor functions will help you be efficient when creating the content you want.

It may also give you ideas about how to present course content in different ways to help students engage with and retain what you teach.

Guide

The Moodle text editor

The default TinyMCE text editor consists of an input box and three rows of function buttons, many of which are the same as in commonly used word processing software.

If these rows are not visible, click the Toolbar Toggle button at the top left of the text editor box.

Default text editor function buttons

Click the links in the Function column to view related instructions.

Button/s	Function
	Select: Font family (Times New Roman, Arial etc.) Font size Font style (Paragraph, Heading 1 etc.) The default is Paragraph style. Click the down arrow to see the effect of the different choices on the text.
	Undo and redo actions
	Find, or find-and-replace text
	Switch fullscreen mode on or off
	Format font
	Align text on left, at centre or on right
	Clean up messy code, format remover, paste as plain text, paste from Microsoft Word
	Select a colour for text or text-highlighting
	Text direction (left to right, or right to left)
	Set as bullet list, numbered list; decrease indent, increase indent
	Insert or edit a link, remove a link, prevent automatic linking
	Insert media: image, manage embedded files, draw pictures, emoticon, embedded media (sound, video or applet), equation, non-breaking-space character, custom character. When embedding audio, use MP3 files for the best performance.
	Insert a table
	Toggle HTML source mode
	Insert or edit a graph, add maths, maths symbols

Atto Text Editor

You can also choose to use the Atto HTML editor.

Atto editor

This has a similar array of functions, with the addition of buttons to record audio and video in the editor as well as an Accessibility checker and a Screenreader helper.

To switch to the Atto editor, edit your Moodle profile, and under Preferences, at Text editor, select Atto HTML editor from the drop-down list.

Atto Text Editor function buttons:

Button/s	Function
	Format font
	Create a bullet list or numbered list
	Insert a link, remove a link
	Insert media: image, audio/video file, manage files, record audio, record video, draw a picture
	Underline, Strikethrough, Subscript, Superscript
	Align text on left, at centre or on right
	Indent text left or right
	Equation editor, Insert character, Table, clear formatting
	Undo and redo actions
	Accessibility checker, Screenreader helper
	Echo360 plugin, Toggle HTML source mode
	Add a horizontal rule line going across the text field
	Add bootstrap grid columns that can take their own text input
	Toggle full screen mode

Copy images between text editors

If you want the same image to display in two places in your Moodle course, you cannot reproduce it by copying the image's URL from the HTML source code in one text editor into a second text editor. That URL is for a temporary file that exists for a single instance of the text editor. The link will break if you cut and paste it into a second text editor.

You can create a second copy by inserting the image from scratch in the second location, or by duplicating the resource or activity in which the editor box occurs. (When a course/resource/activity is imported, or backed up and restored into a second course, all the images are duplicated, and given their own unique link to the relevant legacy course file.)

Additional information

Further assistance

If you experience technical or other issues, consult the Where to get help page.