How to add symbol in new Confluence editor?
Asked by David Makovsk?:

Hi,

exploring the new editor experience, but cannot find a way how to use symbols (feature we heavily use in technical documentation). Am I overseeing something? Any tip appreciated.

Thanks,  
David


Answers:
author: Irma Sutlic
body: Just a sidenote in support of colleagues of mine who have the endurance to raise issues and ask questions:

How much does it take for the Atlassian to add (back) a feature? Maybe the product manager should be reminded that companies use Confluence as a professional documentation creation tool. This implies professional typesetting requirements (of which the availability of special symbols is just one).


author: Stephen Sifers
body: Hello David,

Within Confluence you should be able to add Symbols to your documentation. If you're using the cloud or server products you may find the symbols by going to Insert \> Symbols. More about adding symbols may be found at:

* Cloud: [Use symbols, emojis, and special characters](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/use-symbols-emojis-and-special-characters-724764854.html)
* Server: [Symbols, Emoticons and Special Characters](https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf61/symbols-emoticons-and-special-characters-877187546.html)

I hope this information proves helpful and you're able to continue adding symbols to your documentation.

Regards,  
Stephen Sifers

comments: author: David Makovsk?
body: Hello Stephen,

we're using Confluence Cloud product.

What you are describing is working perfectly fine for us in old editor experience.  
But we cannot find that functionality in new editor experience.

Documentation for that one is missing, just few blog posts are available but not covering symbols.

Kind Regards,  
David


author: Stephen Sifers
body: Hello David,

I just verified on the new editor and you're correct. The option (which was present in the legacy editor) for symbols is no longer present. I did find a recently created feature request to have this added back to the editor. You may find this request at [CONFCLOUD-67811](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67811). We would ask you to vote and watch this request for future updates.

A workaround to this would be to create pages needing these symbols within the legacy editor. While this is not a long term workaround and eventual all pages will be converted to the new editor, you can do this for the time being:

* When creating a new page, select the option "Legacy Editor Template" to use the old editor within a new page.

I hope this information proves helpful and you're able to work around the missing feature while we evaluate a solution.

Regards,  
Stephen Sifers


author: David Makovsk?
body: Hello Stephen,

That's our current workaround. Thanks for clarification. I'll vote asap.

Thank you and Kind Regards,  
David


author: Milan
body: [@Stephen Sifers](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2145523) I'm also facing this issue. Could you please let me know, how can I get the "Legacy Editor Template"? I'm using Confluence on Google Chrome on the Ubuntu machine and I can't find that option after clicking the "+" sign in the left-hand sidebar.

Thank you!


author: Arnold Johansson
body: Voted! Can't even imagine how this is not a must for everyone. :-)


author: Bernt Roelofs
body: Another option that works in the new editor also is to use the special character sequences, ie '(/)' for a check mark. See <https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/symbols-emoticons-and-special-characters-136870.html>   

(and yes, I voted it up also, and am wondering why that's still not implemented in the new editor after so many years)


author: Dennis Smith
body: As another work around, I was able to generate a symbol in Word and then cut and paste it into my Confluence document.


author: Daniel Rykheer
body: ANSWER: As at January 2022, On the new cloud based Confluence, just type a : (colon sign) at the start of the text line. A scrollable visual list of icons appear. If you keep on typing a description for the icon, the list will be filtered.  

I discovered this by creating a Confluence page from a standard template. In this case, a "How-to article". Those already contain icons. Hovering over each icon indicates its "mark-down" keyword to be typed directly in the text.

Examples:

:blue_book \>\> Blue closed book icon

:clipboard \>\> {the obvious}

:link \>\> {the obvious}

comments: author: Bj?rnar Meling
body: Thanks, that is useful information but those are emojis and not symbols and thus not an answer for now.