HTMLElement: outerText property

The outerText property of the HTMLElement interface returns the same value as HTMLElement.innerText. When used as a setter it replaces the whole current node with the given text (this differs from innerText, which replaces the content inside the current node).

See HTMLElement.innerText for more information and examples showing how both properties are used as getters.

Value

A string representing the rendered text content of an element and its descendants.

If the element itself is not being rendered (for example, is detached from the document or is hidden from view), the returned value is the same as the Node.textContent property.

When used as a setter it replaces the current node with the given text, converting any line breaks into <br> elements.

Examples

This example highlights the fundamental difference between outerText and innerText when used as setters (they are the same when used by getters).

Note: The example is a modified version of What is the difference between innerText and outerText? (Stack overflow) by codingintrigue, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Consider a page that contains the following HTML:

html

<div>
  <p>Original content</p>
</div>

outerText replaces the whole selected element, so the JavaScript p.outerText = "Whole element replaced" replaces the whole selected p element:

html

<div>Whole element replaced</div>

By contrast, p.innerText = "Content inside element replaced" replaces the content inside the selected p element:

html

<div>
  <p>Content inside element replaced</p>
</div>

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-outertext

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also