Wikipedia:VisualEditor

This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcut WP:VEWP:VE

Enable VisualEditor	VisualEditor's User Guide	Report a problem
New editors are shown the VisualEditor. If it is not enabled for you, go to Preferences, click Editing, check Enable the visual editor, and click Save.	Learn how to make links, add images, create citations, insert templates, edit tables, and more. You can  try out the Visual Editor in a sandbox.	Use Phabricator to report problems with Visual Editor. Please include your web browser, computer operating system, and Wikipedia skin (usually Vector (2022), sometimes Vector Legacy (2010)).

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• Main page
• Feedback at MediaWiki
• Sandbox (no account required)

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About

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• Documentation:
  • Introductory tutorial
  • User guide
  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Frequently Asked Questions (or at MediaWiki)
• Development:
  • Roadmap up to 2017
  • Updates (2013–2023)
  • Weekly status reports (2015–2016)

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Help out

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• Update the help pages
• Add template data (Tutorial)
• Translate and localize documentation

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Research

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• Main research page

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Other

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• Why are the developers building this? (2013)
  • User Test Data (2013)
• Customization
• Known problems
• Requests for Comments (RfCs): Jul 2013 a, Jul 2013 b, Jul 2015, Sep 2015, Jul 2026

Welcome to the portal for VisualEditor, an editing tool developed by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). It allows users to contribute to Wikipedia without the need to learn the underlying language and formatting. Before the release of this tool, the only way for users to make contributions to Wikipedia was by using the 'Source editor', which requires users to understand wikitext (also known as wiki markup); however, VisualEditor provides a way for people to edit most elements of articles and pages without the need to understand any code or markup. The WMF staff hopes that this tool will encourage more readers to become editors.

New editors editing with the VisualEditor are shown Edit checks. These checks give users a prompt when they forget to add a reference, or when they copy text from elsewhere (which might be a copyright violation or violate the large language model guideline).

Experienced editors may still prefer editing with the wikitext source editor because they find it is faster, more precise, more full-featured, and less buggy. It is also needed for some edits in the discussion pages. Editors who enable VisualEditor will always have the Source editor option available on every page.

If you encounter an issue using the VisualEditor on Wikipedia.org or another Wikimedia project (i.e., not on a third-party wiki), you can report it on the MediaWiki Feedback page. WMF staff prefer that you report bugs via the Phabricator bug tracking website.

About VisualEditor

VisualEditor is a "visual" way of editing Wikipedia that allows people to contribute without having to learn wiki markup. This rich-text editor was made available as an opt-in release on the English-language Wikipedia in December 2012, in 14 other languages in April 2013, and in most other languages at the beginning of June 2013. As of April 2015, it was available by default to users of about 76% of the language editions of Wikipedias and as an opt-in beta feature to the rest, along with most non-Wikipedia projects except Wiktionary and Wikisource. On English Wikipedia, it is enabled by default for new editors.

As of 2021, VisualEditor was used about half as often as the 2010 wikitext editor, and about as often as the mobile web editor. In 2026, it became the default for new editors.

To learn more about using VisualEditor, please read the guide to VisualEditor and the list of common keyboard shortcuts. Your help with the many tasks that need to be done is appreciated. You can also receive regular status updates on your talk page by signing up for the VisualEditor newsletter.

Limitations

Current known limitations include:

• Not available in talk or discussion namespaces – On the English Wikipedia, VisualEditor is not enabled for any talk pages, on the Template or Wikipedia namespaces, and on several of the namespaces that are rarely edited. (T423728) The "Edit" button for VisualEditor is not available on pages where VisualEditor cannot be used. The Reply tool has a visual mode based on VisualEditor, as well as a wikitext mode with a live preview. One workaround is to edit the URL manually by removing 'source' from the end of the URL, or to add a prominent link with that customized URL, like the example below:

  Edit this page with Visual Editor

• Incomplete editing functionality – The content of some complex formatting, including definition lists, will display and can be edited, but editors using VisualEditor cannot modify certain details. Multi-column lists are edited through the complex transclusion dialog, which is difficult. Adding features in this area is one of the developers' priorities.
• Requires JavaScript – If VisualEditor is not available in your browser, or if you have turned off JavaScript, then you will see the buttons for the wikitext editor only.
• Numeric reference names – Currently, VE automatically adds numeric ref names with a colon prefix, i.e., ":0", ":1", ":2", and so on. As of 2026^[update], WMDE is working on improved automatic reference names based on a longstanding wish in the Wishlist. There are no plans to support manually setting named refs in VE (T52568).
• Slower – Loading longer pages into VisualEditor can be significantly slower than the source editor for some users.
• Cannot edit a single section – VisualEditor loads and submits only entire pages. Clicking an edit link for a section will scroll to the appropriate section upon opening. In VisualEditor's model, editing sections would be paradoxically slower than editing the whole page. [Note: Opening an entire page for editing does not increase edit conflicts, which are (roughly) based on editing the same paragraph.]
• Limited support for user scripts – User scripts written for WikiEditor will not automatically work with VisualEditor and may need to be rewritten to work in VE.
• Cannot upload non-free images – At this time, images that are uploaded inside either the wikitext editor or VisualEditor are sent directly to the Wikimedia Commons, which does not accept non-free images. All images that fall under Wikipedia's non-free content policy must instead be stored on Wikipedia using the File Upload Wizard. Commons also runs a filter to reject many images uploaded by editors who have not made many prior edits to Commons, especially for small or low-resolution images.
• Data in merged cells is deleted – If rows or columns are moved across them. Workaround: Unmerge the affected areas before moving, and merge them again afterwards.
• Copying and pasting – Copying and pasting text from the read mode of VE into the editor can cause templates to be expanded, among other problems. See T385558 for a partial list of VE copy/paste issues.
• Template issues
  • Parameters are wikitext, not rich text – VisualEditor lets you edit the parameters of template transclusions, but only as "wikitext" (so "[[Foo]]" or nested templates like "{{Foo|{{Bar}}}}", not "Foo" or "{{Foo|{{Bar}}}}"). (T52355)
  • Footnotes – Footnotes inside templates (most commonly, infoboxes and {{reflist}}) are not visible in the "reuse" dialog, causing discrepancies in the numbering of footnotes displayed at the bottom of the main VisualEditor editing window.
  • Unable to customize parameter order – VisualEditor uses TemplateData to customize the order in which template parameters are listed. This could cause problems with articles or sets of articles where there is a different established, consistent order for templates, especially citation templates.
  • Changes template parameter and value alignment – Especially with infoboxes, VisualEditor can sometimes modify spacing done for parameter and value alignment purposes and add a space after each pipe. Note that this is a deliberate feature of TemplateData that can be managed in the documentation of a given template; see mw:Help:TemplateData#Custom formats for detailed information.
  • Table-formatting unawareness – Popular table cell templates (e.g. yes, no, tba, n/a) can cause issues. The reason is that these templates contain a pipe character to separate formatting and text, but VisualEditor isn't aware of this. As a result, table operations that change the table structure, such as merging/splitting cells or inserting/deleting/moving rows or columns, may not work properly.
  • Unbalanced code – VisualEditor struggles with templates that pass a bit of incomplete code, with markup, to another template or table. These may display oddly or may not be editable if selected in VisualEditor.

You can click "Review your changes" to review the wikitext changes before saving a page. Please report any problems you see, after first searching open VE tickets to make sure it hasn't been reported already..

How to help out

Help is needed to make VisualEditor as good as it can be: You can find and report bugs and ideas for improvements or lend a hand in many other tasks, such as:

• Updating help pages – All Wikimedia Foundation projects have help pages to make contributing easier for new editors. Unfortunately, the launch of VisualEditor has made obsolete the screenshots and tutorials in these help pages, because they describe how to edit using the source editor. Therefore, the VisualEditor development team needs help updating help pages. The user guide to VisualEditor is a starting place for text for the new help pages.
• Adding TemplateData code to template documentation pages – VisualEditor features an interactive template editor—described in more detail in the user guide—and as you'll see if you use it on Wikipedia, some templates display named parameters and nice descriptions that make the interactive template editor easy to use. However, other templates lack them because they need TemplateData code added to their documentation pages for this feature to work. If you're interested in adding TemplateData, read the guide for it and work on the templates listed in Category:Templates with crude or incomplete TemplateData.
• Empower new and existing users to suggest fixes – Even though editing with VisualEditor may be easier, new editors may offer fresh perspectives that can be used to improve Visual Editor but not know where to go or feel experienced enough to make those suggestions. Places to mentor new (and existing) editors include: the Help desk or the Teahouse. Additionally, please feel free to monitor the Category of Wikipedians looking for help.
• Report errors, and suggest improvements – Read about how to write a bug report or feature request, then start a new Phabricator ticket.

Newsletter

• Sign up for the VisualEditor newsletter! Just add # {{#target:User talk:YOUR USERNAME HERE}} to the appropriate part of the list.
• Prior issues of the newsletter can be found at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Updates. Updates are sent out infrequently.
• This list is for the English Wikipedia only. If you want this newsletter delivered to a different wiki, then sign up on the global list at m:VisualEditor/Newsletter.
• You can unsubscribe at any time by removing your name from this list.

Userbox

VisualEditor userbox variants This user primarily edits using the VisualEditor. This user sometimes edits using the VisualEditor. This user primarily edits using the VisualEditor. Please excuse the bugs it occasionally introduces.

You can signal to other editors your use of the VisualEditor on your userpage by using the userbox User:Psiĥedelisto/Userboxes/VisualEditor. See that page for all the options available, three of which are shown here.

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to VisualEditor.

• The mediawiki.org page about VisualEditor, which links to historical regular status reports from 2011 through 2016.
• The mediawiki.org page about Parsoid, the bidirectional wiki parser behind VisualEditor, and historical regular status reports from 2011 through 2014.
• A 2015 study on VisualEditor's effect on newly registered editors