I record meetings and use a service to transcribe them. These transcriptions are very long, so I like to put them into a sub-bullet and collapse them.
When I paste, the first newline breaks out of the bullet and puts the rest of the text outside the bullet list.
I am migrating from logseq. Logseq allowed me to paste into a block that kept the entire pasted text within the block. I hope to find a way to paste into an obsidian bullet that does the same thing.
In Logseq, pasting would always keep things at the same depth. Double newlines would start a new bullet/block, but at the same depth as the first.
Things I have tried
These all didn’t work:
Ctrl-shift-v
Replacing all double newlines with a single newline
Adding a double space / hard break before each newline
Disabling and enabling strict line breaks
The only thing that worked was editing the markdown and manually aligning the large text with the bullet.
Are there any other shortcuts or plugins that might make this possible?
I’m open to a new workflow, but I do like keeping the transcription within the markdown file with the notes. It’s usually in a daily journal that is being created anyway. I would rather not have each meeting require a new transcription file that lives independently of the meeting notes.
I don’t know if there’s a way to get the paste behavior you want, but you can fix the text by indenting all the lines after the first one twice to indicate that they are part of the sub list item. You can do the indenting before or after copy-pasting.
This is a test
- Transcription
- test
sdflasdkfjas
test test
test test test
cowabungoid
In Obsidian you can do it by selecting the lines and pressing Tab twice (or using the Indent command twice; on mobile you can add this to the toolbar).
Selection tips:
If there is no text after the lines, you can place the cursor at the start of the first line you want to select and press Shift Cmd/Ctrl ↓ to select from there to the end of the file.
On mobile, if there’s not too much text before the lines you want to select, you can (at least on iOS) tap twice to bring up the system context menu, choose “Select All”, then drag the top of the selection down to where you want it.
Thanks for the reply. An issue with the transcription is that it’s hundreds of lines long - I transcribe using a STT model that differentiates speakers, so it can be really clunky if it expands when I don’t want it to, necessitating scrolling all the way back up to collapse it.
I think I need to get out of the logseq philosophy. I can use headers instead and have a ## Transcription section that I can collapse. It’s kind of clunky, e.g., I can’t create a new section underneath the last collapsed header without expanding it again. Since the text is so long it’s a bear to scroll back up to collapse it.
I think I found a good workflow using a custom callout. It behaves itself when it’s collapsed, it doesn’t expand without being clicked.
I’m happy with this. Funny thing is it took me too long to get used to the logseq block design and now it’s hard to move away from it. I think as a whole I prefer the less opinionated obsidian approach.
Tho you found a different solution that works for you, here are some tips. Rather than scroll back up to a heading, you can:
Use the “Fold more” command to fold the current section.
Use the Outline in the right sidebar to jump directly to the heading.
Jump to the top of the file, if the heading is close enough to it. With a hardware keyboard that’s Cmd/Ctrl ↑. On mobile you can add the “Go to first line” command to the toolbar. On iOS you can tap the top of the screen.
