 | This help page is ahow-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels ofconsensus. |
In compatible browsers, anedit toolbar can be automatically displayed with the edit box, provided that this has been set in thepreferences. 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 withGoogle Chrome,Firefox,Internet Explorer,Microsoft Edge,the Mozilla Suite/SeaMonkey,Konqueror,Safari andOpera.
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.)
You can switch off or switch on personal preferences set atPreferences →Editing →
Enable the editing toolbar.
If your toolbar looks like this:
Then you are using thesource editor.
If your toolbar looks like this:
Then you are using the rich-textvisual editor.
| Icon | Function | What it shows when editing | What it shows on the page | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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 | Bold | '''Bold text''' | Bold text | ||
 | Italic | ''Italic text'' | Italic text | ||
 | Sign talk comments (with time stamp) | --~~~~ | Username (talk) 05:04, 22 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
 | Internal link | [[Link title]] | Link title | ||
 | Insert image | [[File:Example.jpg|thumbnail]] |  | ||
 | Insert template | {{Example}} |
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 | InsertReference | <ref>Insert footnote text here</ref> | [1] | ||
 | Activate highlighting in wikitext |  active |  Meta has related information at:Wikitext editor syntax highlighting  MediaWiki has documentation related to:Extension:CodeMirror | ||
 Advanced | Open advanced menu | See below. | |||
| Special characters | Open special characters menu | See below. | |||
| Help | Open help menu | See below. | |||
| Cite | Open cite toolbar menu | SeeWikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0. | |||
  | Change "Source editing" to "Visual editing" | ||||
| Icon | Function | What it shows when editing | What it shows on the page | |||||||||
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 | Section heading | | Heading text Heading text Heading text Heading text | |||||||||
 | Bulleted list | * Bulleted list item |
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 | Numbered list | # Numbered list item |
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 | 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 | |
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 | Table | |
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 | Automaticallyredirect to another page | #REDIRECT [[Target page name]] | Preview a redirect page | |||||||||
 | Search and Replace |
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