When adding the content for your mailing, the editor toolbar will be visible. This toolbar works similarly to other word processing software that you may have used and looks like this:
Let's break the Toolbar down by section:
1. Text - This formats your text. By clicking on the three buttons on the right hand side, more options will appear, as shown below:
| 1 | Bold your text | Bold |
| 2 | Italicize your text | Italicize |
| 3 | Underscore your text | underscore |
| 4 | Strikethrough your text | |
| 5 | Subscript | Subscript isThe small text here |
| 6 | Superscript | Superscript isThe small text here |
| 7 |
Text Colour - There are a number of choices of colour for your text. This can be combined with any of the options above to create the style you need (e.g. emboldened and underscored text in Blue). Available colours: Light blue, green, orange, red, white, light grey, grey, dark grey and black. |
There are a selection of colours to choose from |
| 8 | Clear Formatting | By highlighting text and clicking on this button, you will clear all the text formatting eg bold, underscore. Note: Heading sizes will not be removed. You will have to change them via Paragraph Formatting - See #8 below. |
2. Paragraph - This option will format the paragraph any way you choose. It also enables you to choose larger or smaller text, as well as coloured alerts.
| 1 | Left | Align text to the left |
| 2 | Centre | Centres text on the page or within a column |
| 3 | Automatic Numbering |
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| 4 | Right | Align text to the right |
| 5 | Justify | Your text will justify to the left and right margins so you have neat edges on your page when reading or printing |
| 6 | Ordered Alpha or Numeric List - Options available are Lower case Alpha, Greek or Roman or Upper case Greek or Roman |
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| 7 | Unordered List - options of a standard, circle, disc or square bullet point |
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| 8 | Paragraph Format |
This option gives a selection of font sizes for headings or paragraphs |
| 9 | Paragraph Style | This gives the option to put your text into a coloured banner to make it stand out. The banner will stretch the width of the page. |
| 10 | Increase Indent | |
| Decrease Indent - This icon will only be available if you place your cursor within a paragraph that has been indented. By clicking on it, it will move the whole paragraph to the left. You can use this multiple times if your paragraph has been indented numerous times. |
3. Additional Rich choices
- Link - Click to add/ update a link to a webpage, to embed the text or to link to an email package. Simply add the URL, followed by the text you wish to appear in your resource/mailing. Decide whether you would like the webpage to appear in a new tab and confirm by clicking 'insert'.
- Insert image - Once added into your content, you can move images up or down by dragging them. To move it to the left or right, you will need to use the 'Align' button (#2 in the table below). To delete the image, single click on it to select it and press the backspace or delete key on your keyboard or select the 'Remove' button from the image toolbar (#4 in the table below).
To upload an image from your device, click where you would like your image positioned and click on the Insert image button (#2 in the Toolbar screenshot above).
Either upload an image by dragging it into the box (#1 in the screenshot below), linking from a URL (#2) or selecting from your own image gallery (#3).
For existing images, you can then define settings such as size, alignment etc by double clicking on your image and selecting from the pop-up toolbar, as follows:
1 Replace Photo Replace the selected photo with another by dragging and dropping or selecting from file. 2 Align Photo on Page Align the photo to the left, centre or right of your page. 3 Image Caption Add a caption below your image.
To edit the caption, double click on the photo whilst editing the mailing.
4 Remove Photo Remove the selected photo 5 Insert Link By inserting a link to the photo, users will be taken to a website of your choice by clicking on the photo.
To edit or remove the link, edit the mailing and double click on the photo. Ensure that, if you wish to remove the link, you select the 'Unlink' button and not the 'Remove' button as this will delete the photo.6 Display You can either display your text around the photo (inline) or display text above and below your photo (Break Text). 7 Style You have the option to change the style of your photo to have rounded or square corners as well as with or without a border. 8 Alternative Text Alternative text (alt text) is specialist text that describes the meaning and context of a photo in a digital setting, such as on an app or web page. Specialist software is needed to read this text, but will be used widely by vision impaired users.
9 Change Photo Size When you add your photo, it will be the size of the original photo. Adjust the size here by enlarging or reducing the number of pixels in the width box. By leaving auto in the height box, the height will adjust automatically with the width. - Insert Table - Place your cursor where the table will be positioned within the Mailing, then click on the Insert Table icon. Drag your cursor across the grid to highlight the number of columns and rows you require. Once you click, the table will appear in your mailing, evenly spaced between the left and right margins. To adjust the column width, simply click and drag the column line to your chosen width.
Click anywhere in the Table to display the Table Toolbar:
1 Table Header Add a Header Row to your table to clearly define each column. Any text typed in this row will automatically be emboldened. The cells in the header row will automatically be filled with a darker grey.
To remove the Header Row, simply click on the icon again.
2 Remove Table By clicking on this icon your entire table will be removed. This action is irreversible so do take care not to click on this icon by accident. 3 Row Insert or delete rows. 4 Column Insert or delete columns. 5 Style This option enables you to display striped rows, ie one row is slightly grey, the next is clear. It also enables you to add a border. 6 Cell You can split a cell into two or merge cells using this icon. Ensure you are sitting in the cell/s you wish to split or merge. 7 Vertical Align Align your text vertically within a cell to the top, middle or bottom. 8 Horizontal Align Align your text horizontally to the left, middle, right or justified to the margins. 9 Cell Style Fill your cell/s with a colour of your choice using this option. - Insert Horizontal Line - adds a horizontal line between left and right margins to break up your text.
Remember to save your Mailing before exiting.
Line Breaks
One useful tip when writing/editing your resources and mailings is the use of line breaks. There are two types of line break:
1. Shift enter/return will give you a line break with less spacing than a new paragraph This is useful when using bullets/numbering or some other style of formatting (alert boxes in particular) where you want to start a new line without starting a new bullet/number/alert box.
2. Enter/Return will give you a new paragraph with a larger gap between the two paragraphs.