Help:VisualEditor

It can take a few seconds for the page to open for editing, and longer if the page is very large.

Clicking on the "Edit source" tab will open the classic wikitext source editor.

Formatting: Clicking the "A" opens a menu.

• The "Bold" item (B) bolds the selected text.
• The "Italic" item (I) italicizes the selected text.
• The "Superscript" item (x²) causes the selected text to appear smaller than surrounding text and to be slightly higher than the surrounding text.
• The "Subscript" item (x₂) causes the selected text to appear smaller than surrounding text and slightly lower than the surrounding text.
• The "Strikethrough" item (S) adds a solid bar through the selected text.
• The "Computer code" item (a set of curly brackets: {}) changes the font of the selected text to a monospaced font, which sets it apart from surrounding (proportionally spaced) text.
• The "Underline" item (U) adds a solid line beneath the selected text.
• The "Language" item (Aあ) allows you to label the language (for example, Japanese) and direction (for example, right-to-left) of the selected text.
• The final item ( ), called "Remove", removes all character formatting from the selected text, including links.

If you have not selected any text, then when you click the "A" to open the menu, and then select an item, that formatting will apply to the text that you start typing, from wherever your cursor is located.

Instructions for configuring the local citation templates in the Manual tab are available at VisualEditor/Citation tool. Instructions for configuring the citation templates used by Automatic tab are available at Citoid/Enabling Citoid on your wiki.

• The "Images and media" icon (a picture of mountains) opens the media dialog.
• The "Template" icon (a puzzle piece) allows you to edit templates.
• The "Invisible comment" item (a speech balloon with a "!") allows you to insert comments that are not visible to readers; these comments can be seen only when in edit mode and are then indicated by an exclamation mark icon.
• The "Table" icon allows you to insert a table.
• The "Gallery" icon (a set of photos) allows you to insert a gallery to the page.
• The "Math formula" icon (Σ) opens the formula inserter dialog.
• The "Hieroglyphs" icon (an ankh symbol – ☥) allows you to enter the hieroglyphics inserter.
• The "References list" icon (three books) opens a dialog in which you can specify where references will be displayed to the reader. Usually this only needs to be done once on every page.

Note: To remove any inserted image or template, simply select the item and press 'Delete' on your keyboard. To remove a Table, select the item and click the red 'delete' button that appears on screen.

The Page options menu (hamburger icon) is further left of the Publish changes button. On this menu there are options to adjust page settings, such as whether the page is a redirect, or how it is indexed; to add, edit, or delete categories; and to see, using the "Language" item, the list of articles on the same subject that are in other languages. It also includes a Find/Replace tool that supports plain text searches as well as regular expression searches with capture groups that can be recalled using backreferences such as $1, $2, etc.

You can also review your changes using the "Review your changes" button to be sure they will work as intended before saving your changes. This is similar to the "Show changes" button in the Source editor.

The "Resume editing" button returns you to the page you were editing. You can save and publish all of your changes later.

If you select (highlight) text and then press the "Link" button, that text will be used in creating the link. For a link that involves just one word, you can either select that word or just put the cursor anywhere within it.

VisualEditor will try to help with internal links by looking for likely matches.

Click "Edit" to change where the link goes. You can also remove the link altogether by pressing the red chain icon with a line through it. You can open the link's target in another window by clicking on the displayed target. (You might want do this to check if an external link is valid.)

Many wikis use templates to format references automatically. If a template is used in your reference, then all the text in the template will be highlighted when you click on the reference information.

If a template was used and you've clicked on information in that template, then the Template icon (puzzle piece) will appear. Click on that to edit the content of the template, in the template mini-editor dialog.

To re-use an existing reference, place your cursor in the body of the text where you want to add a new reference (number) for that citation. Click on the "Cite" button, and then click on the "Re-use" tab from the "Add a citation" dialog.

You can also just copy-and-paste the reference number.

In the "Re-use" dialog, look at the list for the reference you want to reuse, and select it. If there are many references, you can use the search box (labeled "Search within current citations") to list only those references that include certain text.

After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.

Click on "Insert" when you're done.

You can make the reference belong to a given group, although this is almost always left blank. (This option is used to display groups of references with the "References list" tool; if you need more information, see WP:REFGROUP.)

After you're done editing your new template, click on "Apply changes" to return to the Reference editor, and "Apply changes" again to return to the page you're editing.

Place the cursor where you want to display references (usually at the bottom of the page), open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).

You can change the search by changing the text in the dialog's search box.

To choose a file, click on its thumbnail image.

This places the image onto the page you are editing.

You can resize an existing image by clicking on it, then moving the resize icon (the two-headed arrow on one or both bottom corners).

You can also drag and drop an image to a place higher or lower on the page.

The order of images can be rearranged by dragging the images on the left, and can be added using the "Add new image" button at the bottom of the list. The options tab allows size and layout to be edited. The default display options are preferred in most cases.

When you click the "Done" button, you will exit the gallery editor. You should then see your changes, with the gallery as it will now appear to readers.

Remember that exiting the gallery editor does not save your changes. As with other changes made using VisualEditor, you must 'Publish' the entire page in order to save your work and make it viewable online.

New sub-templates are added by following the steps for adding a parameter. You may need to check the template documentation to make sure that the sub-template is supported. Nested templates can currently be edited as wikitext only, without the facility offered by VisualEditor (see phab:T52182).

Autocompletion doesn't work with subst:. If you want to use autocompletion, first find the template you are looking for, and then add subst: in front of the template name.

Then, click the green "Add template" button.

Add any parameters as usual and click "Insert".

To start a new list, just click on one of the two menu items shown here. Or, if you already have typed the list (on separate lines), select (highlight) the list you have typed, then click on one of the menu items.

You can even import a table by dragging a comma-separated value (.csv) file from your computer into the main editing window.

Now the "Table" menu is available. From that menu, you can add a caption to the top of the table.

To end your editing of a cell, just click elsewhere.

You also have the option of setting or changing the general (default) sorting key, which determines where the page appears when listed with other pages in the same category.

For example, the default sorting key for the article "George Washington" is "Washington, George". In the category "Presidents of the United States", the article is listed under the letter "W", not the letter "G".

Clicking on a category also allows you to specify a sorting key for that specific category. Such a sorting key overrides the default sorting key.

At the bottom is the option to prevent page renames from updating this redirect. This is very rarely used.

Until they are fully supported, you can copy an existing one from another page, or edit the source wikitext directly.