Using the editor

Tips and tricks for writing your edition

 

Axios HQ will generate your intro card, which includes your logo or banner (if you have one), newsletter title and byline, the date, and Smart Brevity® count.

As you fill out the cards (the sections that your edition is broken into), our Smart Brevity® guidance will help you along the way! You’ll see tips pop up, suggestions made, and general improvement recommendations to help you communicate more effectively.

Table of Contents

• Managing your cards
• Utilizing the toolbar
• Adding images
• Collaborative Editing
• Recovering deleted editions and text
• Editor Flexibility
• FAQs

Managing your cards

• Add additional cards to your newsletter by hovering over the space above or below a card and selecting “add new card.”

• Reorder your cards by clicking the collapse button in the upper right corner of any card, dragging your cards around, then expanding them again with the same button. 

Utilizing the toolbar

You can use the toolbar at the top of the editor to format your text, with options to:

• Bold or italicize text
• Create a bulleted or numbered list
• Turn a paragraph into a blockquote
• Add a hyperlink to the highlighted text
• Select an emoji from our emoji menu
• Add polls and inline images
• Quick access to AI features to shorten, professionalize, or activate text. 
• Premium users can change the font size or color of text, add buttons and image collages.
  
  

One fun thing: You can also use the toolbar to add an Axiom – those bolded phrases at the start of a paragraph that help guide your reader’s eye and tell them what to pay attention to.

If you are an admin or owner, you also have the option from this menu to create, edit, or delete custom Axioms for people in your organization to use. Just give your Axiom a name and a brief description for how and when it should be used!

 

Adding Images

Each card can have one featured image just under the headline at the top and as many inline images as you would like. 

You can add inline image using the image icon in the toolbar at the top of the editor, then resize or choose whether to center or left-justify them. You cannot resize featured images, banners, or logos. For featured images, we recommend a 5:3 aspect ratio. A PNG with dimensions of 1000×600 px is optimal.

• Go deeper: Check out our full list of suggested specs for each type of image here.

Premium users can create an image collage and use it as the featured image or include it within the text of a card. You have two image collage options to choose from: side by side or a 2x2 grid.

• Go deeper: Check out our Premium feature article here for instructions on how to add an image collage. 

Axios HQ gives you many images to choose from! In addition to uploading and saving your own pictures, you also have access to our library of illustrations from the Axios Visuals team as well as stock photos through our partnership with Unsplash.

Embedding videos is not currently possible as most email clients (Outlook, Gmail, etc.) do not support videos. We suggest using a screenshot of the video as an image and hyperlinking out to wherever the video is hosted (e.g. the URL to the video on YouTube).

• Once you add the image, you can click on it and a popup menu will give you the option to add a link.
• You can also add a play symbol to the screenshot using an image-editor of your choice, or prompt people to click the image in the caption.

Collaborative Editing

You and your colleagues can work on an edition at the same time. Your teammates’ cursors appear in real-time, showing their contributions in the HQ Editor. You’ll see anybody who’s currently present at the top of the Editor.

• If a user has the Editor open but is not editing (window open and walked away, or scrolling and looking around not inside a card), their avatar turns grey. If a user leaves the Editor, their avatar disappears.

• You can change your profile color by going to the My Profile page and clicking the pencil icon on the circle with your initials.

If you and another collaborator are working in a draft at the same time, you’ll see their cursor with their name and the changes they’re making in real time.

You can see who last edited a card by clicking on the clock icon in the upper right corner of the card to open the Version History sidebar. This shows you a list of previous versions of the card, as well as who has edited it. Select a previous version to see the changes. Hit “Restore” to return the card to an earlier edit.

Recovering deleted editions and text

You have the ability to retrieve a deleted edition within a 30-day window from the date it was deleted. 

To recover a deleted edition: 

• Navigate to your workspace
• Locate the ‘DELETED’ button on the right side of your workspace. Click on it to access the list of deleted editions.  
• Identify the edition that you would like to recover and select the three dots next to the creator’s name.
• Select ‘Restore to drafts,’ the recovered draft will now appear in your drafts tab. 

Keep in mind, you can only recover editions within a 30- day timeframe. Deleted newsletter series and cards cannot be recovered. 

To recover deleted text:

• Navigate to the undo button in the toolbar, the keyboard shortcut Cmd+Z (Mac) / Ctrl+Z (Windows), or from the Version History sidebar. However, deleted cards cannot be recovered.

Editor Flexibility

Modify or remove HQ newsletter elements to customize your update’s formatting with Editor Flexibility. More flexibility in the editor – combined with the Smart Brevity principles that work – means you can use HQ to send all types of essential comms, like one-card notes and important announcements. 

• At the newsletter-level, collaborators can now enable or disable the title, byline, or Smart Brevity word count for a newsletter. This will impact all editions of the newsletter. 
  • Go to Settings > Design
  • Click the checkboxes under “Intro card customization.”
• At the edition-level, you can edit the title or byline for a specific edition in the Editor itself. Just note these updates will only affect that specific edition — not others in its newsletter series.
• To delete an intro or outro card, click the three-dot menu in the card’s upper right corner, and select Delete.
• To re-add an intro or outro card, hover in the gray space where it used to be, and you’ll see a prompt to add it.

FAQs

Can I preview my newsletter?

Our editor very closely reflects what your newsletter will look like. Additionally, we recommend always sending a test to yourself to double check how your newsletter renders in email. There is also the option to preview your customization options (newsletter title, author name, colors, fonts, and banner or logo) on the Settings page.

I’m having trouble with formatting when I copy and paste into the editor. What should I do?

We recommend pasting without formatting: Cmd+Opt+Shift+V on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows.

What image file types are supported?

We support PNG and JPG images. GIFs also work for featured and inline images, but you cannot use a GIF for your banner or logo. For a high quality image, we recommend using PNGs over JPGs.

How do I delete a newsletter series?

Navigate to the settings tab of the newsletter series you would like to delete. Select general and scroll to the bottom and you will see a 'Delete newsletter' button. Deleted newsletter series cannot be recovered. 

Can I recover deleted newsletter series and cards?

Unfortunately, you cannot recover newsletter series or cards at this time.