Thursday, December 3, 2015

Starting a numbered list at a different number in Gmail or other web email client

I recently was sending a colleague a series of questions across multiple emails and I wanted to continue numbering the list where the previous email left off. The rich text editor used by Gmail doesn't have this built-in (not that I can find at least), but I figured out a way using my trusty browser tools.

I'm a web developer so using the browser tools is perfectly normal for me on an average day, but although this might be unfamiliar, it's fairly easy to accomplish.

  1. If you haven't done so already, open your formatting tools by clicking the A button in the toolbar, then insert the ordered list by clicking the "1 2 3" icon.
  2. Right-click your list and choose "Inspect element". If your browser doesn't have "Inspect element" or another "Inspect" option, you can press F12 to open the browser tools then click the button in the top left - this lets you then click the list to select it.
  3. You'll see the HTML of the current page. The <ol> tag is what you're looking for. Your tools might have auto-selected an <li> instead, in which case you'd look for the parent.
  4. Right-click the <ol> tag and choose "Add Attribute".
  5. Type "start=N" (no quotes) where N is the number you want to start with

Your browser should update immediately and you'll see the new number as your starting point.