Please add placeholder text as a macro for new confluence documents.
Asked by Nate Dickinson:

Please add placeholder text as a macro for new confluence documents.I understand it's use in creation of templates, but this is also a useful feature when creating new confluence documents.

Thank you.


Answers:
author: Mykenna Cepek
body: Hi Nate, and welcome to the Atlassian Community.

This is where you can get help and learn from others. It's not really the place to request new features. To request changes to Confluence, you can go [here](https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/) to submit a Product Suggestion.

Be sure to search [here](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JIRAALIGN-1446?jql=ORDER%20BY%20updated%20desc) first, though, to see if your idea has already been submitted. If it has, you should cast a vote for it. Votes are how Atlassian knows what to prioritize. Here is a good article to learn how to use JAC:

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/What-is-JAC-and-how-to-use-it/ba-p/1763554>

As for your actual suggestion, placeholders are really only relevant for Confluence Templates. That's because templates are just that - templates - when creating a new Confluence page.

If you spin a new Confluence page up from scratch, the starting point is a blank page. How would Confluence know what placeholder to offer, if there is no template?

A few final tips to help you get the most out of the Atlassian Community:

* Be sure to tag your question with the product (e.g. Jira, Confluence, etc) as well as the hosting type (Cloud, Server, Data Center), plus any other helpful tags.
* Use "Accept Answer" to recognize the most helpful responses you get. That actually matters a lot for Community Leaders to retain their status.
* Vote-up liberally when you like a question or an answer you see. That also helps others.

Hope this helps!

comments: author: Tina Maddox
body: I would disagree with the need for placeholder text. There are some use cases where instructional text must be added for clarity and not just on a template. This has been a huge blocker for myself in creating instructional forms where placeholder text would be a HUGE help if it were a macro.


author: Mykenna Cepek
body: Hi [@Tina Maddox](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3705634). I'm unclear on your use-case.

Confluence pages for instruction (e.g. How-To documents) are typically viewed, not edited, by users. So placeholder text doesn't seem to add much value there.

For placeholder text to be useful to a user, they would need to be *editing the page*. You mentioned "instructional forms". So I'll assume these forms are pages that your users edit -- but the pages are not generated from a template? Where do the forms come from then?


author: Tina Maddox
body: Hi [@Mykenna Cepek](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3527113)   
Yes the forms are generated from a template where I input the placeholder text.

What I actually need is the text to stay visible when someone is viewing a document. ie. management, etc.

They do not want to have to click into an edit mode to view as their time is tight enough as is rather than just viewing for approval.

Does that make more sense?

The pages are to be used in training materials and needs to be as close to actual as possible when completed.


author: Gabriel Points
body: Hey [@Tina Maddox](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3705634), What I'm doing as a work around is opening up the global template editor on one browser tab or window. I then add the instructional text I want to add to my Confluence page by entering into the template editor and then copying it to my Confluence page. Hope that makes sense/helps![instructional_text_placeholder_text.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/234021iC3B5CE52E38D4A35/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "instructional_text_placeholder_text.png")


author: Tina Maddox
body: Thank you [@Gabriel Points](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1193954) I'll give that a try. ?


author: Micheal Planck
body: [@Gabriel Points](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1193954), you are a genius. Thank you!

Note: this means that the only thing Atlassian needs to do to allow us to use placeholders in regular page editing is *add it to the menu*. All of the support code is there; literally the only thing stopping us is that its not on the menu.

This would take you, what, five minutes to fix if you had the code? Fifteen if you were going to test it?

I have asked this question before, and I continue to find it a mystery greater than the origin of the universe: what do Atlassian programmers *do* all day?


Tags: cloud

feature

questions-for-confluence