How to make existing text belong to a bullet point without having to press double space on every line?

I am encountering quite often problems with text that I have already written but that I later decided that I want to put it inside a bullet point. The problems are two:

1)I want to make a large chunk of text belong inside one new bullet point.

There is the option ‘Toggle bullet points’ but it creates multiple bullet points while I just want one.

2)I want to make a large chunk of text belong inside one existing bullet point.

The only solution I know right now is to add two spaces at the start of each line but it is time consuming.

Thank you

See the setting Editor–>Behavior–>Indent using tabs. This is turned on by default. You can use tab to transform text to list items.

The command Toggle bullet list separates list items based on line breaks. If your target text for one list item contains line breaks, you have to either manually remove list markers from all lines except 1st line or apply the command to the 1st line only. After that select remaining sub items (all text except the first line) and press tab.

Example:

Target text:
item1
sub1.1
sub1.2

Bullet for 1st line:
- item1
sub1.1
sub1.2 

Select sub1.1 and sub1.2 and press tab:
- item1
	sub1.1
	sub1.2 

Screenshots:


Live preview: first list created by manually inserting two spaces, second list created using tabs.


Same lists in reading view, note that empty line between the lists is omitted in reading view. I’m not sure how to overcome that other than adding <br> to denote line break.

One more screenshot if you disable setting Editor–>Display–>Show indentation guides:


The result is somewhat unexpected because in addition to not showing the indendation guides the sub item identation isn’t applied in this case (in live preview).

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  • It sounds as though the blocks of text have got line breaks in them. As such a single block of text without line breaks will be treated as a single bullet point. Have you copied the text from another app that has inserted line breaks?
  • If you copy and ‘paste and match style’ the text below, do the bullets flow correctly?
- It sounds as though the blocks of text have got line breaks in them. As such a single block of text without line breaks will be treated as a single bullet point. Have you copied the text from another app that has inserted line breaks?
- If you copy and ‘paste and match style’ the text below, do the bullets flow correctly?
- ==Left pane== > source mode
- **Right pane** > ==reading mode==

## Test

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Thank you for the great answer.
I want to say that I use Obsidian only in editing mode, so read mode is irrelevant for me.
Anyway, as you have shown in your screenshots the best result would be to manually insert two spaces, but it is time consuming.
The faster would be to select the text and press tab, but this way the newly added text is not in line with the bullet point and I don’t like it.

I have noticed you have mentioned the setting Editor–>Behavior–>Indent using tabs. I have tried to turn it on and off but I haven’t really understood what it changes. Also, under it there is Editor–>Behavior–>Tab indent size but changing that number, doesn’t change anything when I press tab. I don’t know…

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  • Yes, the block of text has line breaks. I had written a lot of text outside the bullet point on purpose, so that I hadn’t to press shift + enter for every new line. I thought that later it would be easy to insert that text inside a previously created bullet point, but I was wrong.
  • Yes, if I copy paste that text everything is as shown in your screenshot
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I think your observations are correct—currently these settings are not working correctly (i.e. a software bug).

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