Add formatting to your Google Chat messages

You can italicise and make text bold in your Chat messages. You can also underline text, change text colour and add bullet points.

Format Google Chat messages

1. Go to Google Chat or your Gmail account. 
2. Go to a conversation.
3. Enter a message
4. Highlight the text that you want to format.
5. Click Format .
6. Select an option:
   • To bold: Click Bold .
   • To italicise: Click Italic .
   • To underline: Click Underline .
   • To strikethrough: Click Strikethrough .
   • To change the text colour: Click Text colour .
   • To add a bullet point before the text: Click Bulleted list .
7. Click Send .

 Tip: To remove text formatting: 

1. Highlight a word or phrase. 
2. Click Format .
3. Select an option and click:
   • Bold 
   • Italic 
   • Underline 
   • Strikethrough 
   • Text colour 
   • Bulleted list 

Use markdown formatting in Google Chat

Important: If you use the 'Format' button or keyboard shortcuts to format text, it overrides any markdown formatting that you add to the message. If you paste formatted text into Chat, it will keep the copied formatting.

To add markdown formatting to your Google Chat messages, you can include special characters in the text.

• To make text bold, add asterisks * before and after the text that you want in bold.
  For example, if you type *Tuesday*, the chat will display Tuesday.
• To italicise text, add underscores _ before and after the text that you want italicised.
  For example, if you type _every week_ , the chat will display every week.
• To strike through text, add tildes ~ before and after the text that you want struck through.
• To create an inline code block, add backticks ` before and after the text that you want in a code block.
• To create a multiline code block, add three backticks ``` before and after the text that you want in a code block.