Write documents

Documents holds formatted documents for Personal or a team: headings, lists, tables, pictures, notes and page layout. For quick writing in Markdown, use Write and organize notes. To share a document, comment on it or suggest changes, see Share and review a document.

Create a document

Select New document, choose a starting point (Blank, Business letter, Report, Proposal, Meeting minutes, Policy, Research paper, Resume or Newsletter draft), then select Create in [team name]. The editor opens on the new document. A starter adds ordinary headings and paragraphs that you can change or delete.

To rename a document, select its title in the page bar, type the new name and press Enter.

The Documents page lists the documents in Personal or the selected team. Documents shared with you directly from somewhere else are listed under Shared with me. Search documents filters both lists by title.

Menus and toolbar

Five menus sit above the page:

• File: All documents, Duplicate, Print, Download PDF, the export formats, Page setup, Version history, Attachments, Move to another team and Move to Trash.
• Edit: Undo, Redo, Find and replace and Save now.
• Insert: Link, Image, Table, Horizontal rule, Page break, Section break, Table of contents, Footnote, Endnote, Equation, Citation, Bibliography, Cross-reference, Bookmark and Comments.
• Format: the paragraph styles (Normal text, Heading 1 to Heading 3, Quote, Code block), Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Highlight, Superscript, Subscript, Inline code, Align left, Align centre, Align right, Justify, the lists (Bulleted list, Numbered list, Checklist), Increase indent, Decrease indent, Clear formatting and Custom styles.
• Tools: Accessibility check and Mail merge.

Below the menus, the toolbar has undo and redo, the paragraph style, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, highlight, the two list types, and buttons for a link, an image and a table. At its end are Continuous or Pages, Comment, and Editing, Suggesting or Viewing for people who can review. Under the page are the word count, the character count and the reading time.

Right-click menus

Right-click something in the document for the commands that act on it:

• A table cell: insert a row above or below, insert a column left or right, delete a row or column, make the first row a header, or delete the table.
• A picture: Picture details (alt text, caption, width and position), Replace picture or Remove picture.
• A table of contents: Refresh contents or remove it.
• A bookmark: All bookmarks or Remove bookmark.
• A footnote or endnote number: Go to footnote and Remove footnote (or endnote).
• A code block: Copy code and Code language….
• A link: Open link, Edit link and Remove link, then the commands for text.
• A checklist item: Tick item or Untick item, then the commands for text.
• Text: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, highlight, link and clear formatting.

Removing a picture, a table of contents, a bookmark or a citation takes it out at once. Select Undo on the message that follows, or press Ctrl/⌘ Z straight after, to put it back where it was. The menu key, or Shift F10, opens the menu for what the cursor is on.

Keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl/⌘ S saves now, Ctrl/⌘ F opens find and replace, Ctrl/⌘ K links the selected text or edits the link the cursor is in, Ctrl/⌘ P prints, Ctrl/⌘ Z and Shift Ctrl/⌘ Z undo and redo, Ctrl/⌘ B, I and U apply bold, italic and underline, and Ctrl Alt F (⌘ ⌥ F on a Mac) adds a footnote. Alt Enter (⌥ Enter) beside a footnote's number goes to its note, and Esc in a note goes back to the text. In a table, Tab moves to the next cell; in a list it indents the item and Shift Tab moves it back; elsewhere it inserts a tab. Ctrl/⌘ Enter ticks a checklist item. → or Delete at the end of the text before a picture, and ← or Backspace at the start of the text after it, select the picture (↓ and ↑ do from the line next to it). With a picture selected, Enter starts a new paragraph after it and Backspace or Delete removes it. Enter in a caption also starts a new paragraph after the picture. Esc closes a drawer. Press ? to list the shortcuts.

Format text

• Highlight marks the selected words in yellow, on the page, in the PDF and in exports. Choose it again on highlighted words to take the highlight off.
• Superscript and Subscript raise or lower the selected characters, as in m² or H₂O.
• Align left, Align centre, Align right and Justify apply to the paragraph, heading or quote with the cursor. Lists stay aligned left. On a selected picture, the first three move the picture.
• In a list, Tab or Format → Increase indent moves an item in under the item above it, up to six levels. A numbered list numbers indented items a, b, c, and the next level i, ii, iii.
• A Checklist has a box beside each item. Click the box, press Ctrl/⌘ Enter, or right-click the item and choose Tick item. A ticked item's words turn grey. Ctrl/⌘ Z straight after takes the tick back.

Typing shortcuts

Markdown typed at the start of a line formats the line once you type a space after it: #, ## or ### for a heading, - or * for a bulleted list, 1. for a numbered list, [] for a checklist ([x] for a ticked item) and > for a quote. --- and Enter add a horizontal rule, and ``` and Enter start a code block (```js starts one in JavaScript).

Around words, **bold**, *italic* or _italic_, ==highlight==, ~~strikethrough~~ and `inline code` format the words once you type the closing marks. Nothing is changed inside a code block.

Press Ctrl/⌘ Z straight after a shortcut to undo the formatting and keep what you typed.

The / list

On an empty line, type / to list what the line can become: headings, lists, a quote, a code block, and everything in the Insert menu, such as a table, an image or a footnote. Keep typing to narrow the list (/foot), use the arrow keys to choose, and press Enter or Tab. Esc closes the list and keeps what you typed.

Code blocks

Choose Format → Code block, or type ``` and Enter. Code keeps its spacing and shows in a fixed-width font. Enter starts a new line in the block; Enter on an empty last line leaves the block for a new paragraph.

A code block's corner has two buttons. The first names its language: select it to colour the code for Bash, C, C#, C++, CSS, Go, HTML, Java, JavaScript, JSON, Kotlin, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, SQL, Swift, TypeScript, XML or YAML. Copy code copies the block's text. Both are also on the block's right-click menu, and Format → Code language… chooses the language of the block with the cursor. A new code block starts in the language of the code block before it. Ctrl/⌘ Z straight after choosing a language puts the last one back.

The PDF, the shared reading page and Word export show the colours; Markdown and HTML export also keep the language's name. In an older browser the code shows in one colour.

Footnotes and endnotes

Choose Insert → Footnote or Insert → Endnote. A number goes in the text at the cursor, and the cursor moves to the note under the text, where you write it. Footnotes are numbered 1, 2, 3 and endnotes i, ii, iii, in the order they appear, and the numbers change when you add or remove one.

Select a number in the text to go to its note, and a note's number to go back. From the keyboard, Alt Enter (⌥ Enter) beside a number goes to its note, and Esc in the note comes back. To remove a note, delete its number in the text, or right-click the number and choose Remove footnote. Undo brings the number back with its note.

A footnote can go in a paragraph, a heading, a quote or a list, not in a table or a code block. On the page, in the PDF and on the shared reading page, footnotes are listed under the text and endnotes after them. Word and OpenDocument exports make them real footnotes and endnotes, which Word and LibreOffice place at the foot of each page.

A footnote added before 20 October 2026 was a paragraph of its own. It now shows as a number at the end of the paragraph before it, with the same text.

Links and bookmarks

Select some text and choose Insert → Link, or press Ctrl/⌘ K. Web addresses, email addresses and #bookmark names are accepted: example.com becomes https://example.com, and an email address becomes a mailto: link. If the text you selected is itself an address, such as example.com or name@example.com, Address is already filled in with it: select Apply link to link it.

To change a link, put the cursor in it or select it, then choose Link again. The drawer is titled Edit link and shows the link's text and address. Change either and select Apply link, or select Remove link to keep the text without the link. If you leave Text as it is, any bold or italic in the link's words stays. Right-clicking a link also offers Open link, Edit link and Remove link.

While you edit, clicking a link puts the cursor in it; Ctrl/⌘-click opens it in a new tab. In Viewing, when you can only read a document, and on its shared reading page, clicking a web link opens it in a new tab, so the document stays open where you were.

A bookmark is a named place in the document: add one from Insert → Bookmark, then link to it with #name.

Pictures, tables and contents

Image opens the image picker: choose pictures from Your images or upload new ones (see Use the image library). A picture starts at its own size, centred, and is never wider than the text.

Click a picture to select it, then drag the handle at its corner to change its width. The width shows as a percentage of the text width while you drag, and settles on a quarter, a half, three quarters or the full width as you pass near one. Format → Align left, Align centre and Align right move a selected picture.

Picture details, beside a selected picture and in its right-click menu, sets its alt text, caption, width and position. Leave the width empty for the picture's own size. The position is Centre, Left or Right on a line of its own, or Left, with text beside it or Right, with text beside it. A picture with text beside it takes half the text width unless you choose another width; on a phone the text goes under it. Ctrl/⌘ Z straight after a change puts it back.

A picture keeps its size and place in the PDF, on the reading page and in DOCX, ODT and HTML exports. A table of contents is built from the document's headings.

Advanced authoring

• Insert → Equation stores an expression, its display mode and a description for screen readers.
• Insert → Citation keeps author, title, publisher, year, web address and DOI. Choose APA, MLA or Chicago (its author-date form) in the citation drawer. The style is the whole document's: citations in the text and the bibliography print in it, in the PDF and in every export. Type one author as Surname, Given name: the bibliography prints it as typed, and a citation in the text uses the surname. Insert → Bibliography lists the document's citations in alphabetical order, under References, or Works Cited in MLA. Citations, the bibliography and cross-references show in the document as they will print, and change when you add a citation or choose another style.
• Insert → Cross-reference links to a heading, figure, table or bookmark. Figure and table captions are numbered.
• Format → Custom styles defines a reusable paragraph style; changing the style changes every paragraph that uses it.
• Tools → Accessibility check lists missing alt text, skipped heading levels, tables without headers, equations without a description, empty links, notes without text and broken references. It finds common problems; it does not certify a document.
• Tools → Mail merge creates a new copy of the document with placeholders such as {{First Name}} replaced. Enter the values as JSON, for example {"First Name":"Alex"}, and select Create merged copy. The values are not sent to another service.

Find and replace

Choose Edit → Find and replace, or press Ctrl/⌘ F. Enter the text, choose Match case if needed, and select Find next. People who can edit also see Replace and Replace all.

Page layout, printing and PDF

Documents open in Continuous mode, one column without page boundaries. Choose Pages in the toolbar to see the document on sheets of its paper size, with margins, columns, headers, footers, page numbers and page breaks.

Choose File → Page setup to set the paper size (Letter, Legal, A4 or A5), the orientation, the margins (Narrow, Normal, Comfortable or Wide), one to three columns, header and footer text, where page numbers go and the number they start at, and whether a ruler shows in Pages mode. These settings are kept when you switch back to Continuous. Insert → Page break starts a new page; Insert → Section break starts a new layout section.

File → Print opens the browser's print dialog. File → Download PDF makes a PDF of the document with its headings, lists, links, tables, pictures, footnotes, page breaks, headers, footers and page numbers. The PDF is a file you download; it does not make the document public.

Attachments

Choose File → Attachments, then Attach file, to add a file from your Magpie files. Attachments can be opened by the people who can open the document, and are not public.

Import and export

On the Documents page, select Import into [team name] and choose a .docx, .odt, .md, .html, .htm or .txt file of up to 25 MB. A new document is created in Personal or the selected team and opens. Headings, formatting (highlight, superscript and subscript included), alignment, lists with their indents, checklists, code blocks, footnotes, endnotes, tables, links, page settings, comments and tracked changes are brought in where the file has them; Word comments become comments, and tracked changes become suggestions. Pictures in a Word or OpenDocument file, and pictures included in an HTML file, come in with their size and place and are added to Your images. A picture in a format Magpie cannot show (such as EMF or TIFF), or one that does not fit in your image storage, is left out, and the import tells you. Scripts, macros and external resources in an imported file are removed, and a picture an HTML file only links to is not downloaded.

The File menu exports the document as DOCX, ODT, Markdown, HTML or plain text. Export clean DOCX leaves out comments and suggestions. Footnotes and endnotes are real notes in DOCX and ODT, and [^1] notes in Markdown. A code block's language is kept in Markdown and HTML; Word has nowhere to keep it, so a code block comes back from Word without one. Pictures are included in DOCX, ODT and HTML, at their size and place; Markdown and plain text leave them out. DOCX uses the document's paper size and margins. Plain text has no formatting, and Markdown and ODT do not keep every page-layout setting. Use Download PDF for the document as it looks in Pages mode.

Saving

Changes save automatically, and the page bar reads Saving…, then Saved, or Save failed with a message saying what went wrong. Wait for Saved before closing after a large edit, or press Ctrl/⌘ S. Read only means you can open the document but not change it.

Move, duplicate or delete a document

File → Duplicate makes a copy in the same team and opens it.

File → Move to another team moves a document created in the wrong place. Choose the destination and select Move document. People in the destination can open it; people in the team it left may lose access. Direct shares, comments, versions and attachments stay with the document. You need permission to edit in both places.

File → Move to Trash moves the document to Trash at once and opens the Documents page, where the message has Undo. A document in Trash can be restored for 30 days.

Documents in the mobile app

The mobile app lists the documents in Personal or the selected team, then Shared with me, with Search documents above. New creates a document, and Import creates one from a DOCX, ODT, Markdown, HTML or plain text file.

A document opens for reading. If you can edit it, select Edit to change the title and text, then Save. Each section has a format control (paragraph, heading, list, checklist, quote, code or note). Highlights, indented and ticked list items, and footnote numbers stay as they are when you edit the text around them, and the notes are listed under the text. Select text for Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Code and Link; a link address starts with https://, http:// or mailto:, or names a # bookmark. Edit also has Add pictures, Add table, horizontal rules, page and section breaks, a table of contents, equations, footnotes and endnotes, citations, a bibliography, cross-references, bookmarks, page layout, a picture's Width and Position, Replace picture, Remove picture, and buttons to move a block up or down. A picture shows at its width and side; text set beside a picture shows beside it on the website and in the PDF, and under it in the app.

The document's More menu has Manage access, Move to another team, Comments, Chat, Review suggestions, Accessibility check, Version history, Share document link, a Share item for each export format including PDF and clean DOCX, and Move to Trash.

Documents and the assistant

The assistant can search documents, read one, create one, change its text, add comments and suggestions, save and restore versions, manage direct access, move a document to another team and move one to Trash. It moves a document to Trash, gives or removes access, accepts or rejects a suggestion, or restores a version only when you confirm it in your message.

If a document will not save, print or export, copy any unsaved writing somewhere safe before reloading, then Contact support.