[ARCHIVED] Headings in existing pages

[jmerriam]

I'm in the process of retrofitting my entire course to make it fully accessible, and changing all my headings (for which I'd just used font sizes) to the actual Heading categories...but Canvas doesn't change them! The only way to implement the actual headings is for me to delete my previous heading, then go up to Headings and indicate which one I want to use, then RE-TYPE the heading. Does anyone have a work-around here?

[James · Accepted solution]

 @jmerriam  

There is no need to retype it.

What is happening is that Canvas is changing the base element from a paragraph to a heading, but because you've applied special formatting with the font size, it's overriding the heading and so it appears that nothing is happening. What we need to do is clear the formatting.

Thankfully, there is a Clear Formatting button in the Rich Content Editor that you can use to remove the special codes you have.

Here's an example from the old RCE. My cursor (hidden) is currently on the second line. You can see it is marked as Header 2, but it looks the same as the text I made bold and changed the font to 18pt.  I've highlighted the clear text button.

When I highlight the second row and then click the clear formatting text, I get this:

In the new Rich Content Editor, the clear formatting has a different icon and is farther to the right.

[jmerriam]

Wow…thanks so much for this, James! Never even thought about “Clear Formatting.” Would have been nice to have this info on the Help page…and even when I tried to Google it to find an answer, I couldn’t find anything. Your links really helped!

Joan

[Stef_retired]

Thanks for mentioning that,  @jmerriam ‌! "Clear Formatting" is an incredibly handy tool; once I discovered it, I started using it regularly. It's detailed in the Remove Text Formatting section of https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-26542-how-do-i-add-and-modify-text-in-the-rich-content-edit...