📝 Rich text in custom fields is now live!

[Vanessa_N]

Hi Community

Text custom fields have officially joined high society. Rich text formatting is now available!

And yes, we mean rich in every sense of the word.

You can now add structure and context directly to your text custom fields. Keep campaign copy, status updates, knowledge-base content, and other workflow details readable and useful, without jumping to another tool.

What’s new?

With the existing Text custom field type, you can now add:

• Bold and italic formatting
• Headings
• Lists
• Hyperlinks
• Inline images, where supported

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How to use it?

When adding a value to a text custom field, type “/” for the menu to appear:

This update helps teams keep longer, more structured information connected to their work. It also addresses this discussion here in the Forum: How to create a custom field that is LONG text (like the Description field)?

A quick note: rich formatting is best experienced in detail views. List and board views may show a simpler version when you are not actively editing, and CSV exports do not preserve formatting.

If you want to learn more about custom field types and limitations, check out this Help Center article.

Give it a try and let us know how you plan to use rich text in your custom fields!

[Skyler]

Another quick note: If you’re adding text via the spreadsheet grid view (e.g. list view) you will need to use ⇧ return to create a paragraph break. Hitting return on its own will register as a submit action the way it does with other custom fields (also the same way adding text to a cell in spreadsheet applications like Google Sheets and Excel).

	Grid	Task Pane
return	Submit input	Paragraph break
⇧ return	Paragraph break	Line break

Other commentary

Not that I think this should necessarily change. Just wanted to point this out because while it is consistent with how data entry in custom fields (and cells in general) behave, I can imagine many people expecting text editor conventions to take precedence since they likely interact with text editors far more in their day-to-day.

[Bryan_TeamKickstart]

Love love love!! Love this! Seeing expanded text boxes on click from ListView is just awesome! Thank you so much to you and all the amazing people behind the scenes. Please pass along my gratitude.

What a rich and luxurious Gatsby-esque experience!

[Andrea_Watkins2]

I’ve noticed hyperlinks do not come through when you use variables in a Rule. E.g. If I create a rule to write the directions in the Description and I add a custom field that includes a hyperlink, only the text comes through not the link. I hope there are plans to fix this.

[Timothy_Sautter]

How do you make the notification go away? It keeps popping up no matter how many times I click “ok”?

[Larry_Berger_lpb]

Welcome, @Timothy_Sautter,

I saw the same thing happen to me in one Asana environment. I kept clicking “Ok” but it would return. Eventually it did stop, but sorry, I can’t recall if it was related to anything I did (perhaps refresh/restart window/tab).

Sorry this was not more helpful,

Larry

[TheAnswerLady]

Are there plans to expand this to Forms as well? Forms are the source for our longest custom fields and it would be helpful to allow Form Submitters to format their text for clarity.

[Larry_Berger_lpb]

@TheAnswerLady

allow Form Submitters to format their text

@TheAnswerLady, You can vote for that here:

Allow text formatting in Form fields

Hi all, Is it possible to allow text formatting (e.g. bold, italics, bullet points, etc) in form fields? I’m thinking of creating a form to allow a submitter to request that we publish a KB article for them, and if they were able to format the proposed article in a form’s field, it would save time – theoretically, we could simply copy/paste what they wrote into our authoring tool. Thanks! Brian

Thanks,

Larry

[Davide_Muzzarelli]

@Vanessa_N How about checklists?

Checklists should also be available inside the task description field, not just as subtasks.

They serve a different purpose: subtasks are separate units of work, while checklists are lightweight steps or acceptance criteria within a task. Adding checkboxes to the text editor would make descriptions easier to follow, keep small action items in context, and avoid cluttering projects with unnecessary subtasks.

[ka_nishiyama]

Hi, @Davide_Muzzarelli

Is this what you’re referring to?

Check box in tasks

Is it possible to add checkbox in tasks comments and if someone check it, it gets saved?

[Vanessa_N]

Hi @Davide_Muzzarelli, thank you for the feedback! This is not in our short-term plans yet, but I recommend adding your vote to the topic @ka_nishiyama mentioned and following the thread. This way, if the request enters our roadmap in the future, you’ll get notifications on the progress

[Olivia_McAuliffe]

Is there a way to disable rich text in custom fields? We have one that we copy/paste from Excel, but don’t want it to format as a cell It’s not a huge deal to just type it in instead, but would simplify a continuous daily action to simply be able to turn this off!

[Richard_Sather]

Hi @Olivia_McAuliffe , unfortunately, not currently.
Feel free to add your vote and voice here:

Disable rich text for a certain text field - ability to choose between rich or plain text

The recent ability to add rich text to a text field is a great update, however for certain fields, I would rather have the ability to disable rich text and simply be able to paste text that gets stripped of all formatting, as it used to be. Perhaps a simple checkbox would do the trick, like my crude sketch below? [image] The issue is, for example, when pasting a website or a URL which converts to a vanity link, so now we need to spend time converting it to plain text. Before (with plain tex…