Checklists - How to add line breaks
Asked by Barbara Decker:

On a checklist item, how do I add line breaks. I'm not very conversant, but did google markdown and tried adding / and also tried adding 2 spaces, which seemed to be the suggestions I saw. Neither worked, so would appreciate guidance. Thanks.


Answers:
author: salix
body: I played around with the Markup and get a workaround for our Jira Instance

Editor view

```
[ ] Test List 
- <br> 
+ Test 1 <br>
+ Test 2 <br>
>>
+ Test 3 <br>
+ Test 4 <br>
```

will be shown like this
> Test List -  
> + Test 1  
> + Test 2  
> \[Your description expand text\]  
> + Test 3  
> + Test 4

The list markup in combination with the \<br\> seems to be solution, for what ever reason  
Why the first list markup is shown in the line above, i don't know :-(

List markups that seems to work so far + - \*

comments: author: Matthias
body: That works for me in Jira!

Thank you so much! :)


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Barbara Decker](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2791059) there's no newlines in checklist items.

Why did you want them there? There might be another way to achieve your goal.

comments: author: Barbara Decker
body: I have a checklist item and it consists of thoughts best broken into paragraphs - but it is one checklist item. Or I have a checklist item and am making a list of options for how I might do it - and those options should be one per row. Thanks for your help.


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Barbara Decker](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2791059) in that case what I'd recommend is creating cards for each thing on the checklist, and copying/pasting a link to that card into the checklist item. I use this pattern a lot!


author: Barbara Decker
body: Thanks a bunch. I'll give that a try. Much appreciate your response!


author: fytos
body: There IS actually a way to add a new line (or break).  
But it requires a "cheat".

Open notepad. Enter a new line. Select the two lines and copy them.  
Paste them after the word you the new line.  
Everything after the word will go to a new line!!

I'm 90% sure you can do it with ASCII characters as well, on keyboards with numeric pads (Desktops. On the laptop is not that easy), like holding ALT and typing 0163 would, if I remember well, insert the pound symbol (?) ... another number would enter a break.

UPDATE: USED to work ... now it doesn't.

I wonder what Trello and Atlassian updated and stopped this one.


author: Stefano Ferroni
body: I have many checklist items like this:  

"Set up a call with:  

- Mickey Mouse   
- Donald Duck  
- Goofy  
- ... "  

this is one single action (so a single checklist item) with a list attached, which should be far more readable if I could use newlines


author: blueinc
body: [@fytos](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4203134)Copy/pasting a newline from Textpad works again. Thanks for the tip!


author: Rosa Clark
body: Hi, I used textedit on mac and no go. Didn't work


author: Matthias
body: None of these ideas worked for me :(

Has anyone another idea?


author: Michael Monson
body: I would really like to find a solution to this as well. I was hopeful about creating a newline in Notepad, as that makes perfect sense that it might carry over. But such a character code (basic ASCII character set) tends to be platform specific, and not guaranteed to work on all platforms. Plus, such codes can cause grief if stored in many database systems, so it is not surprising that Atlassian would filter out such characters and white space. Ideally Atlassian / Trello would simply add it as a feature.


author: Michael Monson
body: However, I did stumble across a partial work-around that may be effective. Trello supports markdown syntax, and in many of the areas of trello, there is a high level of markdown support. Yet in the case of checkbox lists, this was apparently not considered a feature customers would use. But for those of us who have lengthier checklists, you can use the back-tick syntax (two before and two after the text you wish to use) to create a sort of preformatted "code" that will preserve spaces. As long as you put at least one character in side it. For example:

```
`` .? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . ``
```

```
`` -? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? - ``
```

This may help you format things a bit more to your liking... certainly a creative use of this can help break apart text a bit.