Format Text in Live Scripts

R2026b

You can add formatted text, tables, images, videos, hyperlinks, and equations to your live scripts and functions to create a presentable document that you can share with others. You also can check your text for spelling issues and change the font of the text.

Insert Text Items

To insert a text item, on the Insert tab, click Text to add a blank text line. To return to code, click Code. Adding text lines can affect code line numbering depending on how you save the live script. When you save the live script using the plain text live code file format (.m), each text line corresponds to one or more code lines in the saved file. As a result, adding or removing text lines changes the line numbers of any code that follows.

This table describes the text items that you can insert from the Insert tab.

Option	Description	Additional Details
Text	Insert a blank line of text.	A text line can contain formatted text, images, videos, hyperlinks, or equations. You can insert a text line before, after, or between code lines.
Table of Contents	Insert a table of contents.	A table of contents contains a list of all the titles and headings in the document. If the document contains only one title, the title is not included in the table of contents. Only the title of the table of contents is editable. You can insert a table of contents only in text lines. If you insert a table of contents into a code line, MATLAB^® places it directly above the current code section. When you export a live script containing a table of contents to Microsoft^® Word, by default, the table of contents in the resulting document does not include page numbers. To add page numbers, click the table of contents in Word and select Update Table.
Code Example	Insert a formatted code example.	A code example is sample code that appears as indented and monospaced text. Select MATLAB to insert sample code as text highlighted according to MATLAB syntax. Select Plain to insert sample code as unhighlighted text.
Table	Insert a table.	You can insert tables only in text lines. If you insert a table into a code line, MATLAB places the table in a new text line directly under the selected code line. To specify the table size, select Table , move the cursor over the grid to highlight the numbers of rows and columns you want, and click to add the table. To create a larger table, select Table > Insert Table, and specify the numbers of rows and columns in the dialog box. After inserting the table, you can modify its rows and columns: Insert or delete rows and columns — Right-click the table, select Table, and then select from the available insertion and deletion options. Resize columns — Click and drag the edge of the column. To reset the column widths, right-click and select Table > Reset Column Widths. Make the first row a header row — Right-click the table and select Table > Turn Header Row On.
Image	Insert an image.	You can insert images only in text lines. If you insert an image into a code line, MATLAB places the image in a new text line directly under the selected code line. To change the alternative text, alignment, and size of an image after inserting it, right-click the image and select Edit Image from the context menu. Alt text — Add text to the text box to specify alternative text for the image. Alignment — Select from the available options to specify how the image aligns with the other items in the row. Size — To specify a size relative to the original image size, select Relative (%) and specify the width and height of the image as a percentage of the original size. To specify an absolute size, select Absolute (px) and specify the width and height of the image in pixels. Select Keep aspect ratio to maintain the aspect ratio while resizing. To return to the original image size, right-click the image and select Reset Image.
Video	Insert a YouTube^® video or video file.	You can insert videos only in text lines. If you insert a video into a code line, MATLAB places the video in a new text line directly under the selected code line. Select Video > Online Video to insert a YouTube video. Then, enter the URL of the YouTube video. Online videos are subject to the terms of service and privacy policy of the video provider. Select Video > Video File to insert a video file. To resize the video, click an edge of the video to select it. Then, click and drag a corner or edge of the video to resize it. To return to the original video size, right-click a corner or edge of the selected video and select Reset Video Size.
Hyperlink	Insert a hyperlink.	You can insert hyperlinks only in text lines. If you insert a hyperlink into a code line, MATLAB places the hyperlink in a new text line directly under the selected code line. Select Web page to insert a hyperlink to an external webpage. Then, enter the URL of the webpage. Select Location in existing document to insert a hyperlink to a specific location in a separate live script or live function. Enter or browse for the file path and then select a location in the document preview that appears on the right. Select Location in this document to insert a hyperlink to an existing location in the document. When prompted, click the target location in the document. You also can use the Alt+Up Arrow and Alt+Down Arrow keyboard shortcuts. The target location can be a code section, text paragraph, title, or heading. Linking to individual lines of text or code is not supported. Select Existing file to insert a hyperlink to a file. Then, enter the file path.
Equation	Insert an equation.	You can insert equations only in text lines. If you insert an equation into a code line, MATLAB places the equation in a new text line directly under the selected code line. For more information, see Insert Equations into Live Scripts.

Format Text

To format existing text, use any of the options included in the Text section of the Live Editor tab:

Format Type	Options
Text style	Normal Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3 Title Customize Styles For more information about customizing styles, see Change Fonts and Colors.
Text alignment	Align left Align center Align right
Lists	Bulleted list Numbered list To create multi-level lists, press the Tab key to indent a numbered or bulleted item. To decrease the indentation, press Shift+Tab. To change a sublist to a different list type, use the Bulleted list and Numbered list buttons.
Standard formatting	Bold Italic Underline Monospaced

To convert selected text or code to all uppercase or lowercase, select the text, right-click, and select Change Case. You also can press Ctrl+Shift+A. If the text contains both uppercase and lowercase text, MATLAB changes the case to all uppercase.

Check Spelling

Since R2024a

You can check for spelling issues in text lines and comments in your live scripts and functions. Words with a potential spelling issue appear underlined in blue. To resolve the issue, click the word and select one of the suggested corrections. You also can choose to ignore the issue or add the flagged word to your local dictionary. To navigate between issues using the keyboard, use Alt+F7 and Alt+Shift+F7.

Spell checking is supported in US English for MATLAB code files (.m), live code files (.m and .mlx), and Markdown files (.md). To remove words from your local dictionary, go to your MATLAB settings folder (the folder returned when you run prefdir) and edit the file dict/en_US_userDictionary.tdi.

By default, spell checking is on. If a file contains many unrecognized words, such as when not written in US English, MATLAB automatically turns spell checking off for that file. To manually turn spell checking off for a file, go to the View tab, and in the Review section, toggle the Spelling button off. To turn spell checking off by default for all files, on the Home tab, in the Environment section, click Settings. Select MATLAB > Editor/Debugger > Spelling and set Check spelling to Off. To change what text to spell check, in the Where to check spelling section, select or clear the available options. For more information, see Editor/Debugger Spelling Settings.

Before R2026a: Spell checking is off by default. To turn spell checking on, go to the View tab, and in the Review section, toggle the Spelling button on. In addition, spelling settings are not available and spell checking in Markdown files is not supported.

Change Fonts and Colors

You can change the font, size, color, and formatting of text and code styles in live scripts and functions.

To customize a text or code style for the current document, go to the Live Editor tab, and in the Text section, click the text style drop-down list and select Customize Styles. Then, select the style that you want to customize and change the font, size, color, and formatting for the selected style. The Customize Styles dialog box shows a preview of each style.

The customized style applies only to the current document. To apply the customized style to all new live scripts as well, select the Use this configuration for new live scripts option.

Customize Styles dialog box showing the selected font, size, color, and formatting for the Normal text style, and a preview of all the styles

Alternatively, to customize a text or code style for all open documents and all new documents programmatically, use matlab.fonts Settings. All open live scripts and live functions update to show the selected fonts. When you create new live scripts or functions, the selected fonts are applied as well.

For example, this code changes the color and style of titles in live scripts and functions:

s = settings;
s.matlab.fonts.editor.title.Style.PersonalValue = "bold";
s.matlab.fonts.editor.title.Color.PersonalValue = [0 0 255 1];

Zoom

To increase or decrease the displayed font size in live scripts and functions, zoom in or out using the Ctrl+Plus (+) and Ctrl+Minus (-) keyboard shortcuts or by holding Ctrl and scrolling with the mouse. On macOS systems, use the Command key instead of the Ctrl key. The change in the displayed font size does not apply when you export the live script to PDF, Microsoft Word, HTML, LaTeX, Markdown, or Jupyter^® notebooks.

Autoformatting

For quick formatting in live scripts and functions, you can use a combination of keyboard shortcuts and character sequences. Formatting appears after you enter the final character in a sequence.

This table shows a list of formatting styles and their available keyboard shortcuts and autoformatting sequences.

Formatting Style	Autoformatting Sequence	Keyboard Shortcut
Title	`# text` + Enter	Ctrl+Alt+L
Heading 1	`## text` + Enter	Ctrl+Shift+1
Heading 2	`### text` + Enter	Ctrl+Shift+2
Heading 3	`#### text` + Enter	Ctrl+Shift+3
Section break with heading 1	`%% text` + Enter	With cursor at beginning of line with `text`: Ctrl+Shift+1, then Ctrl+Alt+Enter
Section break	`%%` + Enter `---` + Enter `*` + Enter**	Ctrl+Alt+Enter
Bulleted list	`* text` `- text` `+ text`	Ctrl+Alt+U
Numbered list	`number. text`	Ctrl+Alt+O
Italic	`text` `_text_`	Ctrl+I
Bold	`text` `__text__`	Ctrl+B
Bold and italic	`*text*` `___text___`	Ctrl+B, then Ctrl+I
Monospace	`text` `\|text\|`	Ctrl+M
Underline	None	Ctrl+U
LaTeX equation	$LaTeX$	Ctrl+Shift+L
Hyperlink	`URL` + Space or Enter `<URL>` `[Label](URL)`	Ctrl+K
Trademark, service mark, and copyright symbols (™, ℠, ®, and ©)	`(TM)` `(SM)` `(R)` `(C)`	None

Note

Title, heading, section break, and list sequences must be entered at the beginning of a line.

Sometimes you want an autoformatting sequence such as *** to appear literally. To display the characters in the sequence, escape out of the autoformatting by pressing the Backspace key or by clicking Undo . For example, if you type ## text + Enter, a heading in the Heading 1 style with the word text appears. To undo the formatting style and display ## text, press the Backspace key. You can escape out of a sequence only immediately after completing it. After you enter another character or move the cursor, escaping is no longer possible.

To revert the autoformatting for LaTeX equations and hyperlinks, use the Backspace key at any point.

To force formatting to reappear after escaping out of a sequence, click the Redo button. You can redo an action only immediately after escaping it. After you enter another character or move the cursor, the redo action is no longer possible. In this case, to force the formatting to reappear, delete the last character in the sequence and type it again.

To disable all or certain autoformatting sequences, you can adjust the Editor/Debugger Autoformatting Settings.