Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

First, you'll want to set the "toolbar" value

First, if you don't specify a "toolbar" attribute, you'll get a pretty ugly looking default toolbar with 3 rows of LOTS of icons. Now, if you read the docs, it will point out that you can get a simpler subset with setting the toolbar to a basic setting. But then, if you're not careful, it will complain:

toolbar set "basic" does not exist

A search of google (or the CF docs) won't turn up much.

Second, it's "Basic", not "basic"

So what's the solution? Well, it turns out that it's simply that the attribute is case-sensitive. Doh! So a working example is:

Note that, of course, you do need to do it within a CFFORM tag. I've added a CFDUMP to show the results when you do submit it.

That offers a nice single-row set of icons. (The alternative value, to get the default list, is "Default" (not "default"), but if you leave the toolbar attribute off, you'll get it anyway. The docs (see below) talk about how you can modify what icons you see by creating your own custom toolbar. It's just that the docs don't clarify well this issue about the basic value being case-sensitive. (I've added comments to the livedocs which have been accepted.)

Don't use Rows/Cols, use Width/Height

Here's another bummer that's not well documented: when using CFTEXTAREA, the traditional ROWS and COLS attributes (of a normal Textarea tag) have no affect at all, whether you're using an HTML or Flash-based CFTEXTAREA.

The solution: you must specify Height and Width (in pixels). (You won't get an error if you use rows and cols, they just won't have any effect.)

Some other issues

If you haven't noticed, when you submit such a rich text textarea, what you get in the form submission is the entered text with HTML tags representing whatever formatting the user applied using the toolbar, or keyboard shortcuts, like Ctrl-B for bold. (I'm really not interested in debating here whether the HTML it creates meets everyone's preferences. Please take that up on the livedocs comments area.)

Finally, I'll point out that the docs (the Developers Guide page, at least) shows using the attribute as richtext=true. FWIW, this can also be specified as "true" (quoted) and "yes". I just mention this in case anyone may go doing google or adobe site searches to find more on the use of the feature. You might not find all there is if you're too specific about these "richtext" attribute values.

Where to find help for still other issues

If you need more help on or introduction to the rich text textarea, I'd point you to blog entries by other folks:

• ColdFusion 8: All about the rich text editor
• ColdFusion 8: Enable File, Image and Flash upload in the rich text editor in five steps

And of course see the docs:

• CFML Reference on CFTEXTAREA
• ColdFusion Developer's Guide discussion of CFTEXTAREA richtext option

Finally, I'd like to clarify that I really don't mean for this blog entry to become a place where all manner of problems related to using the rich textarea are discussed. I'd ask that please you keep any questions or observations related to just really fundamental aspects of using it, and take up other concerns at the Adobe CF Forums, especially the CFORM forum.