Text and markdown

Text boxes let you add notes, instructions, and documentation to your canvas. They support full text formatting, markdown shortcuts, links, mentions, and dynamic text.

Inserting a text box

  • Select the T icon from the toolbar.
  • Or use the keyboard shortcut: T.

Formatting your text

When you select a text box, formatting options appear in the Design sidebar:

  • Font family & weight
  • Font size
  • Text color
  • Formatting – bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
  • Alignment – left, center, right, justify
  • Vertical alignment – top, middle, bottom
  • Opacity – adjust transparency of the text

Inline options

While typing in a text box, you’ll see additional inline options:

  • Link – add a hyperlink to external content.
  • Dynamic text – insert references that update automatically (e.g. values from cells).

Use @ to bring up a menu of objects you can tag:

  • Users – @username creates a user tag. Users receive an email notification when tagged if they have opted in to receive notifications in their user settings.
  • Frames or cells – @frame-title or @cell-title creates a clickable link to that object.

Markdown shortcuts

When editing a text box, use the following shortcuts to create markdown elements.

  • # + space → Header 1
  • ## + space → Header 2
  • ### + space → Header 3
  • - + space → Bullet point
  • > + space → Callout
  • ``` + space → Code block

Text keyboard shortcuts

  • T – Insert a text box
  • Cmd/Ctrl + E – Inline code format
  • Cmd/Ctrl + B – Bold
  • Cmd/Ctrl + I – Italics
  • Cmd/Ctrl + Control + Space – Emoji picker