Visual Space manual, Articles, Write And Format An Article

Use this walkthrough when a concise article draft needs room for explanation, evidence, tables, or supporting images. You will turn the draft into a structured long-form article, check how its headings guide readers, and leave the latest body changes safely saved.

Prepare the Draft for Expansion

An article does not require a long-form body. A clear title and usable summary can be enough for a short publication, while the body is most useful when readers need context, examples, or material they may return to later. The summary remains the opening readers see in feeds; the body continues the idea after they open the article.

Before expanding, make sure you can edit the draft and that its summary already gives readers a reason to continue. If you have not created the draft yet, start with Create and Publish an Article.

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Open your draft - Return to the article you want to develop and confirm that its title and summary describe the same central idea.

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Choose the right depth - Keep a simple announcement concise. Add a body when the subject benefits from sections, a connected argument, reference material, tables, or several supporting visuals.

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Select Expand To Article - The long-form body opens beneath the summary, with its formatting tools ready for writing. If the control is not available, finish the summary content first.

The body currently allows up to 30,000 characters. Treat that room as a ceiling, not a target: a focused article is easier to navigate than a long page whose sections repeat the summary.

Build a Structure Readers Can Navigate

Headings do more than style a line. They become section landmarks in the article's desktop Topics index, so a useful outline improves both the reading flow and the way readers jump through the finished work.

Watch the Topics panel as you edit. A new body heading should appear as its own entry, and changing or removing that heading should update the structure. The summary and body headings play different roles: the summary introduces the article, while the headings divide its deeper explanation.

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Sketch the reading path - Write the main section ideas in the order a reader needs them. Put prerequisites and framing before consequences, examples, or next steps.

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Turn section labels into headings - Place the caret on a short section label and use the article heading control. Keep each heading specific enough to make sense in the Topics index without the paragraph beneath it.

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Develop one idea at a time - Add the explanation, evidence, or example that belongs under each heading. Use ordinary paragraphs for connected thought and lists for parallel choices, requirements, examples, or actions.

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Add emphasis and links selectively - Use the formatting toolbar for meaningful emphasis and links. Formatting should clarify the hierarchy rather than compete with it.

The body toolbar stays directly above the long-form content and headings you are shaping.

Bring In Existing Rich Content

On the web, you can paste prepared material into the focused body instead of rebuilding every paragraph by hand. Supported structure from Visual Space, web pages, Word, Google Docs, Markdown, and rectangular spreadsheet selections can become editable article content.

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Place and paste the content - Click the exact body position where the material belongs, then use the normal paste action. Recognized headings, lists, links, emphasis, and tables are converted into the article's supported formatting.

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Inspect the result immediately - Check heading levels, list boundaries, links, table dimensions, and the text around the insertion point. Conversion depends on the shape supplied by the source, so a complex document may need a small cleanup.

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Restore the article's voice - Remove source-only styling and adjust transitions so the pasted section reads as part of this article rather than as an attached fragment.

Plain text remains plain when the editor cannot confidently recognize a richer structure. If a table-like paste does not convert cleanly, insert a native table and move the content into it instead of leaving a hard-to-read text grid.

Insert and Edit a Native Table

Use a table when rows and columns express a real relationship that prose or a short list would obscure. Tables inserted in the body remain editable and stay in the article's reading flow; they are not flattened screenshots or separate spreadsheet attachments.

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Set the insertion point - Place the caret between the paragraphs where readers need the comparison or structured data.

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Choose Insert table - Open the table size picker from the body toolbar and select the initial number of rows and columns.

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Fill the cells - Enter concise labels and values, moving through the table as you work. Keep enough surrounding explanation that readers know how to interpret the data.

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Adjust the structure - Open a cell's table options to add a row below, add a column to the right, or delete the current row or column. Close the active table cell when you are ready to continue writing outside the table.

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Review rich table pastes - A recognized Markdown table, HTML table, or rectangular spreadsheet selection becomes a native editable table. Confirm that headers, row order, and column boundaries survived the paste before continuing.

Add Images Where They Support the Text

Body images belong at the point where they explain or illustrate the surrounding section. On the web, the focused article body accepts images from its picker, the clipboard, or a drag from your computer.

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Choose images from the toolbar - Place the caret at the destination, select the image control, and pick one or more image files.

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Paste an image into the body - Focus the body at the intended position, then paste the image file. The focused body owns the insertion; clicking elsewhere before pasting can leave it without a valid destination.

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Drop images onto the body - Drag image files over the editor and release them when the Drop images into article area appears. Non-image files in the same drop are ignored rather than attached to the article.

An in-place upload block holds the chosen position and shows whether one image or several images are uploading. Every image must fit the space's upload-size limit. A mixed batch can keep the images that succeeded while omitting a rejected or failed item, so inspect the final block instead of treating the temporary upload state as completed media.

Media uploaded into a private space area follows that area's access rules. Embedding it in the body does not make it available to people who cannot access the area. Resolve any visible rejection or failure before judging the finished layout.

Decide Between One Image and an Album

One image in a body media block appears as a single image. Two or more images in the same block become an album grid that readers can open in the shared media viewer.

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Keep one image on its own - Use a single image when it has a direct relationship with the nearby paragraph and deserves the full visual focus.

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Create an album for one visual set - Select or paste several related images together when readers should browse them as one group.

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Add to an existing block - Use the add control on an editable image or album when another image belongs to that same set. Adding more media changes a single-image block into an album without moving it out of the reading sequence.

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Remove only the placement you no longer need - Delete an image from the editable block or media viewer when it no longer supports the article. This removes the embed from the body; it does not delete the uploaded file from Documents.

Do not group unrelated illustrations simply to save vertical space. An album communicates that its images belong together, while separate image blocks let each visual support a different section.

Verify Structure and Save State

The body saves automatically as you edit, independently from the title and summary. A pending indicator means the latest body change is still being saved; a check confirms that the current change reached its saved state.

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Scan the body from the top - Confirm that the summary leads naturally into the first body section and that paragraphs, lists, tables, and media appear in the intended order.

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Check every heading in Topics - Make sure each meaningful section has a clear index entry and that ordinary text has not accidentally been formatted as a heading.

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Test the structure as a reader would - Use the desktop Topics entries to move among sections when that navigation is available. For the published reading behavior, see Reading Articles.

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Wait for the saved check - After a substantial edit, keep the draft open until the body reports that the latest change was saved.

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Retry a failed save - If the body shows a failure, use Retry saving, leave the current text in place, and wait for the saved confirmation before publishing or leaving.

The Topics index turns the seeded body headings into a compact route through the finished article.

Once these checks pass, the draft can remain private for another review or continue into publication. Authoring and Publishing explains how the summary, body, autosave, validation, and publication state work together.

Remove the Body Only When the Article Should Become Concise

Removing the long-form body is different from deleting the article. Use it when the title and summary should remain but the complete expanded portion is no longer wanted.

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Choose the body delete control - Open the removal action from the body toolbar only after confirming that no section, table, or image placement is still needed.

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Read the confirmation - The editor warns that the entire body will be cleared and is hard to restore. Cancel if you meant to remove only one block or image.

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Confirm Delete body - The body and its heading entries are removed, while the article and its summary remain.

If you only need to remove one image, use the media block's delete control instead. Neither removing that embed nor deleting the complete body is a command to delete the uploaded file from Documents.

Fix Common Authoring Problems

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Expand To Article is missing - Complete the draft's summary content, then check the article controls again.

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Pasted formatting looks different - Clean up the converted result using the supported body tools. For a broken text grid, insert a native table and rebuild only the affected rows and columns.

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An image did not appear - Confirm that the body owned focus, the file was an image, and it fit the space's upload-size limit. Wait for the upload block to finish or review the visible failure message.

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A section is absent from Topics - Format its label as an article heading. Bold text alone does not create an index entry.

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The latest change is not confirmed - Do not publish or leave on a failed body save. Use Retry saving and wait for the saved check.

You now have a long-form body with deliberate structure, editable rich content, correctly grouped media, a useful Topics index, and a confirmed save state. The final publication journey continues in Create and Publish an Article.