Help:Edit toolbar

For the toolbar that shows under the edit window and allows the insertion of various characters and symbols, see Help:CharInsert.

In compatible browsers, an edit toolbar can be automatically displayed with the edit box, provided that this has been set in the preferences. It appears automatically for editors who are not logged in. This functions partly as a typing aid and partly as a reminder of the available functions. All the functions are available simply by typing the code directly into the edit box (such as [[link]]) – this may be easier.

The toolbar works with Internet Explorer, the Mozilla Suite/SeaMonkey, Firefox, Konqueror, Safari, Opera and Google Chrome.

In Mozilla browsers, IE, and Chrome you can format existing text by highlighting the text you want to format and clicking the relevant button on the toolbar. If you click a button without selecting any text, sample text will be inserted at the cursor's position (like so: Bold text). In other browsers, clicking on the button presents an explanation for that feature. (Pre-release 9.0 versions of Opera browser also seem to support the advanced functionality.)

The Edit Toolbar has a different appearance depending on personal preferences set at Preferences → Editing:

Enable the editing toolbar	⧼wikieditor-toolbar-dialogs-preference⧽	Toolbar
Off	Off On	Standard toolbar
On	Off	Enhanced editing toolbar
	On	Enhanced editing toolbar with wizards

Visual editor

If your toolbar looks like this:

0.8x

Then you are using the rich-text visual editor.

List of functions

Enhanced toolbar: main selections

Icon	Function	What it shows when editing	What it shows on the page
	Bold	'''Bold text'''	Bold text
	Italic	''Italic text''	Italic text
	External link	[http://www.example.com link title]	link title
	Internal link	[[Link title]]	Link title
	Insert image	[[File:Example.jpg|thumbnail]]
	Insert Footnotes	<ref>Insert footnote text here</ref>
	Sign talk comments (with time stamp)	--~~~~	Username (talk) 20:39, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
	Insert citation	See below.
	Advanced	See below.
	Special characters	See below.
	Help	See below.

Enhanced toolbar with wizards: main selections

Icon	Function	What it shows when editing	What it shows on the page
	Bold	'''Bold text'''	Bold text
	Italic	''Italic text''	Italic text
	Sign talk comments (with time stamp)	--~~~~	Username (talk) 20:39, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
	Internal link	[[Link title]]	Link title
	Insert image
	Insert Footnotes
	Advanced	See below.
	Special characters	See below.
	Help	See below.
	Cite toolbar	See Wikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0.

Enhanced toolbar with wizards: Advanced selections

Icon	Function	What it shows when editing	What it shows on the page
	Search and Replace	Search for strings of text and optionally replace them, progressing one at a time or replacing all occurrences at once. If the regular expressions check box is selected, then the targeted search term is interpreted as a symbolic "expression", called a "regular expression", which will act as a pattern to select targets for replacement. Any amount of text can be matched by a regular expression. Languages that use this type of regular expression include Perl, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, .NET, and XML. A list of the regular expressions accepted by this search and replace box has been compiled for reference by the Mozilla Contributors.

Advanced selections

Icon	Function	What it shows when editing	What it shows on the page
	Section heading	== Heading text == === Heading text === ==== Heading text ==== ===== Heading text =====	Heading text Heading text Heading text Heading text
	Bulleted list	* Bulleted list item	Bulleted list item
	Numbered list	# Numbered list item	Numbered list item
	Nowiki: Ignore wiki formatting	<nowiki>Insert non-formatted text here</nowiki>	Insert non-formatted text here
	Line break	<br />	text before abc
	Big text	<big>Big text</big>	Big text
	Small text	<small>Small text</small>	Small text
	Superscript	<sup>Superscript text</sup>	Superscript text
	Subscript	<sub>Subscript text</sub>	Subscript text
	Picture gallery	<gallery> Example.jpg|Caption1 Example.jpg|Caption2 </gallery>	Caption1 Caption2
	Table	{| class="wikitable" border="1" |- ! header 1 ! header 2 ! header 3 |- | row 1, cell 1 | row 1, cell 2 | row 1, cell 3 |- | row 2, cell 1 | row 2, cell 2 | row 2, cell 3 |}	header 1 header 2 header 3 row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2 row 1, cell 3 row 2, cell 1 row 2, cell 2 row 2, cell 3
	Automatically redirect to another page	#REDIRECT [[Target page name]]	Preview a redirect page

See also

• Wikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Toolbar (Firefox only)