About the Content Editor Web Part

Archived content. No warranty is made as to technical accuracy. Content may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist.

You can use the Content Editor Web Part to add formatted text, tables, hyperlinks, and images to a Web Part Page.

Important

  • The Content Editor Web Part is intended for adding HTML content to a Web Part Page, it is not designed to link to a Web site. If you need to link to a Web site, consider using the Page Viewer Web Part.

  • The HTML <FORM> element is not allowed in the Content Editor Web Part. If you need to add a Web Part that uses the <FORM> element, consider using the Page Viewer Web Part or the Form Web Part.

Ways you can use the Content Editor Web Part

You might use the Content Editor Web Part to add:

  • An introductory, formatted paragraph to a page.

  • A table of instructions to explain a chart on your page, the data behind the chart, and how it was graphed.

  • A set of hyperlinks to more information.

Important: The HTML <FORM> element is not allowed in the Content Editor Web Part. If you need to add a Web Part to a page that uses the <FORM> element, consider using the Page Viewer Web Part or the Form Web Part.

Ways to enter content

There are three ways you can add content to the Content Editor Web Part:

Rich Text Editor Using this editor, you can type formatted content automatically without prior knowledge of HTML syntax. Use the buttons on the standard and formatting toolbars at the top of the window to enter and format the content. Click Help on the standard toolbar to display a summary of the tasks you can perform and their corresponding buttons.

Source Editor Using this editor, you can enter or modify HTML source code. The Source Editor is a plain text editor and is intended for users who have knowledge of HTML syntax.

Content Link Instead of editing content, you can link to existing content by entering a hyperlink to a text file containing HTML source code. The two valid hyperlink protocols you can use are:

  • Hypertext Transfer Protocol (https://)

  • Hypertext Transfer Protocol with privacy, which uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption (https://)

You can use an absolute URL or a relative URL. However, you cannot use a file path.

Important: If the Content Link property links to a file that is located outside the Microsoft site and the site does not have anonymous user access enabled, then you cannot access the file. For assistance, contact your site administrator.

Combining edited and linked content

You can combine edited and linked content to provide both primary and secondary information. For example, you could provide an error message as secondary information in the edited content, in case the linked content, or primary information, is not available. When you provide both edited and linked content, the linked content is always used first. If the linked content is not accessible, the edited content is used.