HTML <textarea> tag

The <textarea> tag is used to display a textarea. A textarea is a form element similar to the textbox but with more flexibility. A textarea allows more than a single line of text, and its width and height can be changed as well.

Attributes

Attribute	Description	Possible values
cols	Required. Sets the number of columns in a textarea	numColumns
rows	Required. Sets the number of rows in a textarea	numRows
disabled	Sets a textarea to be disabled (will be grayed out and the user will not be able to edit it)	disabled
name	Sets the name of a textarea	txtareaName
readonly	Specifies that a textarea is read-only, meaning you can't change its content but only read what's already there	readonly

Standard attributes

accesskey, class, dir, id, lang, style, tabindex, title, xml:lang

For more information on standard attributes, check out our HTML standard attributes reference page.

Event attributes

onblur, onchange, onclick, ondblclick, onfocus, onmousedown, onmousemove, onmouseout, onmouseover, onmouseup, onkeydown, onkeypress, onkeyup, onselect

For more information on event attributes, check out our HTML event attributes reference page.

Example

<form> Name: <input type="text" name="name" /><br /> E-mail: <input type="text" name="email" /><br /> <textarea rows="10" cols="40 name="comments"> Your comments (enter them here) </textarea> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form>

Output:

Tips & notes

Use the textarea when you want to receive data that may require a paragraph or two such as user feedback. You can use a textbox for the users name, another textbox for the users email address, and a textarea for the users feedback.

If you want some text to appear in a textarea when the page loads, include that text between the <textarea> and </textarea> tags. The above example demonstrates this concept.