Text editor tips: formatting, line breaks, and links
Commslayer's email composer is a rich text editor. Here are the most common things people run into and how to handle them.
Line breaks vs. paragraph breaks
The composer behaves like most email clients:
- Enter — creates a new paragraph (adds a blank line of space between blocks, like pressing Enter twice in a Word doc).
- Shift + Enter — creates a line break (single-line spacing, no extra gap).
Use Shift + Enter when you want text to wrap to the next line without extra whitespace — for example, inside an address or a list of items where you don't want paragraph-level spacing.
Adding a hyperlink
To turn text into a clickable link:
- Select the text you want to link.
- Click the link icon (🔗) in the formatting toolbar above the editor.
- Paste or type the URL in the popup and confirm.
The selected text will become a clickable hyperlink in your email.
Pasting from Excel or Google Sheets
When you paste tabular data directly from a spreadsheet, the formatting can carry over in unexpected ways (extra spacing, merged cells, etc.). To get clean results:
- Paste as plain text using Cmd + Shift + V (Mac) or Ctrl + Shift + V (Windows/Linux). This strips all formatting and pastes the raw text.
- Then reformat as needed inside the editor.
Alternatively, type the content manually or use a canned response if you find yourself pasting the same table often.
Drafts are saved automatically
What you type in the reply box is saved as you type, separately for each conversation. Switch to another ticket, come back, and your text is still there. Replies and private notes are kept as separate drafts.
- Drafts are stored in your browser. They survive a page refresh, but they don't follow you to another browser or device, and your teammates can't see them.
- Attachments are not part of the draft. Neither are Cc or Bcc recipients you changed, or an edited subject.
- The draft is cleared when you send the reply, or when you click Clear at the bottom of the reply box.
If a draft has gone missing, you're most likely in a different browser or a private window, or your browser data was cleared.
Adding images
- Insert → Image puts the image inside your message, where the customer sees it in the body of the email.
- Pasting a screenshot or dragging in an image file adds it as an attachment.
- On WhatsApp and social DMs, images are always sent as attachments.
Subject, Cc and Bcc on a reply
Email replies have Edit subject, Cc and Bcc at the top of the reply box. Edit subject changes the subject of the thread from then on.
When the reply box gets in the way
- Click the X icon (Close) at the top right of the reply box to collapse it and read the full conversation.
- Click the Maximize icon next to it to write in a large editor, and Minimize to shrink it again.
- The reply box can't be resized by dragging. The conversation list and the right sidebar can: drag their edge.
Other formatting tips
- Use the toolbar to apply bold, italic, bullet lists, and numbered lists.
- Your signature is only added once you've saved it under Settings → Profile settings → Message signature and clicked Signature in the reply box to turn it on. Set up your signature →