Simple Editor
How to write a letter-style template in the Simple editor: the letterhead and footer, the text toolbar, images, tables, variables, drafts and saving.
The Simple editor is for letters: a page with your letterhead at the top and your words underneath, written as you would in a word processor. Open a letter with the pencil on its row in Settings > Document Templates or with Edit design on its details page. Start a new one with Create Template, then Create from scratch and Simple editor, or use the Simple letter, Classic letter or Bold letter templates in the gallery.
The letter is drawn on a page the size of the template, so what you see is what prints.
The Letterhead and Footer
- Letterhead: Your logo with your business name, address, phone number and email beside it. A new letter has it switched on. Use the Letterhead switch under the toolbar to turn it off, for example when you print on paper that already has your letterhead.
- Footer: Your business name, phone number and email in a line across the foot of the letter. Switch it on with Footer.
- Where their details come from: Both are filled in from Settings > Organisation Information, so they can’t be typed into here. Change your details there and every letter picks them up.
Writing the Letter
Click on the page and type. The toolbar above it works on the text you’re in or have selected:
- Text style, Font and Font size: Paragraphs and headings, and the fonts that print exactly as they look.
- Bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, Text colour and Highlight: For marking out words.
- Link: Turns the selected words into a link.
- Text alignment: Left, centred, right or justified. With an image selected, it lines up the image instead.
- Lists and indenting: Bulleted and numbered lists, and Indent and Outdent to move a paragraph in or out, up to six steps. Tab and Shift+Tab do the same.
- Subscript, superscript and Clear formatting.
- Image: Opens your media library to choose a picture or upload a new one. The image sits on a line of its own, and you can drag it to another place in the letter.
- Table: Adds a table of three rows and two columns with a heading row. With the cursor in a table, the button becomes a Table menu to add or delete rows and columns, turn the heading row on or off, or delete the table. Tab moves from cell to cell.
- Divider: A line across the page.
- Variables: Details filled in for each customer when the letter prints, such as their name and address. Pick one and it goes in where your cursor is, written like {{customer_name}}. It’s ordinary text, so you can make it bold, change its colour or put it on a line of its own. Format or delete the whole of it, curly brackets included: a variable with only part of it changed isn’t filled in.
The bar at the bottom of the screen counts the words and characters in the letter, leaving out the letterhead and footer.
Parts the Simple Editor Can’t Change
A letter that has been in another editor can hold things the Simple editor doesn’t make, such as a button. They show on the page with a note such as Button, kept as it is. and print as they were made. To change one, open the letter in the HTML editor.
Saving Your Work
- Drafts: Your changes save to a draft about two seconds after you stop typing, and the top bar says Draft saved. Ctrl+S, or Cmd+S on a Mac, saves the draft straight away. A draft doesn’t change what prints.
- Save & quit: Makes the letter the one that prints, keeps a copy in Version history, and takes you to the template’s details page.
- Coming back: If you left with a draft, the editor opens with it and a note saying when it was saved, with Discard changes to go back to the letter as it was last saved.
- Undo and Redo: In the top bar, and with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z.
- Preview & test: Shows the letter filled in for one of your customers or with example details, and can download a PDF or email you a test. See Preview & Test Popup.
The Menu
- Template details: The template’s details page.
- Version history: Earlier saved versions of the letter, to look at or restore. See Version History Popup.
- Save as template: Saves the letter as it is now as a new template in Your templates, leaving this one as it was.
- Import and Export: See Importing and Exporting Templates.
- Open in the HTML editor: Turns the letter into HTML for editing as code. You can bring it back to the Simple editor later. See Moving Designs Between Editors.
- Discard unsaved changes: Shown while there’s a draft.
Related articles
- Drag and Drop Editor: For documents laid out in sections and columns, such as invoices.
- Creating a Document Template: Starting a letter from scratch or from the gallery.
- Branding and Business Details: The logo and details your letterhead uses.
- Editing a Document Template: The letter’s page size, layout and how it’s used.