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Rich text in work items

It is probably common knowledge by now that the history and html fields allow rich text input. Since there is no toolbar to edit rich text, I have seen users even compose text in editors like Microsoft Word and then paste it in the work item.

But looks like it is not very well known that the Visual Studio Formatting toolbar works for text in these fields! From the View menu, select Toolbars > Formatting to bring up the Formatting toolbar. When these controls are in context the toolbar is enabled letting you change font, font size, text color etc.

Here's a screenshot:

image 

* I detached the Formatting toolbar from the top pane for illustration

 

We are working on adding a toolbar on the form itself for an upcoming release making it much more obvious that this functionality is available.

 

Sunder Raman

Program Manager, Team Foundation Server

Published Wednesday, April 09, 2008 5:44 PM by sunder

Comments

# re: Rich text in work items

Thursday, April 10, 2008 8:45 AM by erik steiner

This is what I am looking for!

Unfortunately, this does not work in my environment. The formatting toolbar remains inactive when the Description field of my work item types are in focus. It works for the comments in the History-control.

My Description field is of type "plain text" and for the form it is set to "HtmlFieldControl".

Is there any other prerequisite for that to work?

Regards,

Erik

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# re: Rich text in work items

Friday, April 25, 2008 8:28 PM by sunder

Erik,

Glad to hear this addresses what you were looking for.

Your description field needs to be a HTML field. Plain text fields don't support rich text. Ok, that last part sounds a little funny.

Hope this helps,

Sunder

# re: Rich text in work items

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 2:36 PM by skim

Hi Sunder,

I'm trying to implement RTF capabilities to the Description field.  Do I just change the field type of the existing Description field or add a new Description field and replace the existing one?

Thanks in advance!

Steve

# re: Rich text in work items

Monday, May 12, 2008 3:45 PM by sunder

Steve,

If your description field is already HTML field then you don't have to do anything. If not, you will have to create a new HTML field for this as there isn't a way to convert field types.

Hope this helps,

Sunder

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