Text editor

The text editor (sometimes referred to as the 'HTML editor' or even 'TinyMCE') has many icons to assist the user in entering content. Many of these icons and functions should be familiar to anyone who uses a word processor. Some examples of where you will see the text editor include: Editing Section headings, description of an activity, writing an answer to a quiz question or editing the content of many blocks.

The collapsed editor

Since Moodle 2.5, the text editor appears collapsed with no formatting in many places to save space. To access the full editor, click "Show editing tools" as in (1) in the screenshot below. You can use keyboard shortcuts for quick formatting as in (2) in the screenshot below. (See Text editor FAQ for a list of shortcuts.) To increase the size of the editor, drag the bottom right once you have clicked "Show editing tools" as in (3) in the screenshot below.

The collapsed editor

The expanded editor

The full editor

The standard version of the text editor tool bar

List of groups

For those who are not familiar with the tool bar, here are the functions listed by group using the above example. Remember that the site administrator can edit or provide additional toolbars.

Row 1

• - Font, size and heading group
• - Undo and Redo group
• - Find and Replace group
• |Full screen toggle

Row 2

• - Text effect group
• - Line format group
• - Formatting group
• - Color group
• - Paragraph group

Row 3

• - Number and Bullets and indents
• - Link group
• - Insert group
• - HTML source toggle & spellchecker

Special features

Color pickers

• 

There are four levels of selecting a font or background color,

• A quick pick 5x8 matrix of colors
• "More colors" that links to Picker, Pallet and Named tabs

• 

  A quick pick 5x8 matrix of colors

• 

  A rainbow color picker tab

• 

  A Pallet tab with a 18x12 matrix of colors

• 

  A Named tab with custom pallets

Insert images and media

The Insert images and media group

• 1 Insert Image - uses File picker
• 2 Insert Emoticon (only visible if the site administrator has enabled the "show emoticons as images" filter in Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Filters>Manage filters)
• 3 Insert Media - uses File picker
• 4 Insert Equation - uses java script editor
• 5 Insert Non breaking space
• 6 Insert Custom character - Special keyboard characters
• 7 Insert Table -

• 

  File picker Upload file screen

• 

  Equation editor

• 

  Custom character selector

Insert table

• 

  General tab

• 

  Advanced tab

To add borders to a table

Cell borders are crucial for helping readers to follow the rows across the screen. If they aren’t showing already you can add them as follows:

1. In the Wiki page containing your table, click its Edit tab
2. Carefully select all the cells of the table
3. Then right click (Macs: Command+click or Ctrl+Click) over any part of your selection to get a context menu; from it select Cell > Table Cell Properties; the cell properties dialog box then loads.
4. Click on its Advanced tab, set Border Color to black (for instance), then click Apply, and then click Update.
5. Click Save; the Wiki page containing your table will then load displaying its borders.

Site administration settings

Manage editors

A site administrator can enable / disable text editors in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Text editors > Manage editors. By default the TinyMCE HTML editor and plain text area are enabled.

TinyMCE editor settings

The TinyMCE HTML editor has its own settings page Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Text editors>TinyMCE HTML editor>General settings with the following options:

Plugins

• Buttons for equations, emoticons,images, media, automatic linking, and spell-checking may be enabled, disabled or uninstall here by clicking on their eye.
• Additionally the equation, emoticon and spell check buttons have links to their Settings screens.

The TinyMCE editor plugins screen

Insert equation

Accessed from Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Text editors>TinyMCE HTML editor>Edit equation, this allows you to enable or disable the TeX filter in the editor context and thereby display the Dragmath button. If you have a global custom TeX filter, then disable this setting.

Insert emoticon

Accessed from Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Text editors>TinyMCE HTML editor>Insert emoticon, this allows you to enable or disable the emoticon filter in the editor context and thereby display the emoticon button.

Spell checker

If you want to disable the TinyMCE spell checker and rely on browser spell checker functionality instead, you can do this by disabling the spellchecker plugin by clicking the eye in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Text editors > TinyMCE HTML editor > General settings

You can select a different spell engine from Settings> Site administration > Plugins > Text editors > TinyMCE HTML editor>Check spelling and can choose languages for the spell checking feature

Choosing a different spell engine

add additional languages for spell checking

Spell checking in action in the editor

If PSpellSpell is selected then aspell 0.50 or later must be installed on your server and the path to aspell set in Settings > Site administration > Server > System Paths.

Customising the editor toolbar

An administrator can remove or add buttons to the TinyMCE editor toolbar by altering the Editor toolbar box in Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Text editors>TinyMCE HTML editor>General settings as demonstrated in the screencast Customise the text editor in 2.4

The Editor toolbar box

Example of simpler toolbar with added horizontal rule button

An "insert time" button has been added

Here is the default list of TinyMCE buttons available for use

Available fonts list

In addition to the default fonts, a site administrator can add extra fonts by typing their name and string in the box in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Text editors > TinyMCE HTML editor>General settings as demonstrated in the screencast How to add extra fonts.

Custom configuration

A new setting in Moodle 2.4.1 onwards in Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Text editors>TinyMCE HTML editor>General settings provides a box in which an administrator can apply custom formats. See MDL-37186 for more details with examples, and see also the TinyMCE configuration page

See also

• Text editor FAQ