Resize Confluence tables to any width!

[Andy Reising]

When I try to resize in edit mode, the table just snaps back to the original width. I can't resize at all. Have tried on Chrome and Edge. 

[Rory Baker]

Hey all, thanks for taking the time to provide us your feedback. I wanted to provide a few updates on some of the topics raised recently:

• Providing a full-width responsive option - in light of the continued feedback on this topic we plan to bring forward work to explore enhancements to full-width tables and table behaviour across different viewport sizes. We will be using the suggestion ticket here in the first instance to communicate and provide updates.

• Drag n drop - we are currently working on bringing you drag n drop in tables! Please keep an eye on the suggestion ticket here for further updates.

• Creating tables in full-width pages - we hear your feedback in this space - thank you. As a result, we are exploring making changes which would make tables behave as follows in full-width pages;

1. Insert tables at full-width / 1800px by default.

2. Insert tables left aligned by default (please note the suggestion ticket for providing more table alignment options here)

We will be leaving this ticket here open to track progress on these changes.

• Resizing of nested tables (for already allowed nesting scenarios) - we understand your desire for this to be enabled, and it’s on our list - we just aren’t quite there yet. To track this work I’ve created another suggestion ticket here, please give it a follow if this is of interest to you.

• PDF exports - @Jay MacEachern I'm sorry but we haven't been able to find a regression as part of this change, however we understand there are some pre-existing limitations around displaying full-width tables in PDFs. Please would you be able to reach out to me direct at rbaker@atlassian.com so the team and I can better investigate with you?

• Tables in templates with a first row having a grey fill - @Phil Bustin if my understanding of your issue is correct, then I believe you need to do the following to resolve it;

1. Navigate to space settings > look & feel > templates

2. Find your template and click edit

3. Select the table in question

4. Select the “table options” dropdown in the table context menu

5. Toggle the “header row” option OFF

6. Save the updates to your template

Cheers,

Rory

[Rory Baker]

Hey @Andy Reising - that looks unexpected, is there any chance you can please reach out to me direct at rbaker@atlassian.com so the team and I can investigate with you?

[Haddon Fisher]

Based on some quick googling, it looks like the new Confluence editor was officially announced on February 2019. 57 months later....

• We're still missing some basic things that we used to be able to do in the old editor.
• We actually lost a couple of things that made it into the new editor but then got pulled so you could "make it better".
• Whenever something actually does get restored, it seems like it's either significantly worse than what we used to have or doesn't actually solve the problem at all.

I realize there's probably plenty of "under the hood" reasons why retiring the old editor was a good idea, but at this point I'm getting real 'sunk cost fallacy' vibes here.

Is there a point at which you'd consider ending this experiment and rolling back to the markup editor? It had it's issues, but I recall the list being considerably smaller.

[Andy Reising]

@Rory Baker I got it to work as expected using a private window, with no extensions. Now begins the process of ruling out which one is the problem... 

[Michael Woffenden]

RESPONSIVE PLEASE

[Yehuda Dembsky]

Hi,

I am facing issues with Distribute columns.
It is greyed.

Any help?

[Patricia Modispacher _appanvil_]

Hi @Yehuda Dembsky,

did you mark the columns? 

[Yehuda Dembsky]

Hi Patricia,

Yes, It didn't help
Thanks for getting back on this

Yehuda

[Angie Adams]

This resizing doesn't seem to work when a table is embedded within the layout macro.  it continues to resize to full page width.  I'd like to see better controls than having to resize tables every time a page is edited.

[Kieran Lowe]

This is such a design fail, it's 2024 and I have to look up how to resize a table + I can't align it on the page where I want it. I wish my company hadn't migrated to Confluence Cloud.

2 out 10 guys.

P.s. I don't care enough to upvote issues on your public feature request Jira board. It doesn't seem to reduce the distance between your product/UX design team and your customers. It certainly doesn't seem to help you avoid releasing under cooked features like these tables.

[Zoltan Hesz]

This doesn't seem to work if the table is within a macro, like a layout.
At all.
The new tables are a nightmare to work with. 

[Derek Price]

Yeah, this is really ugly.  I hate it and I miss the old responsive behavior.  I want my table to expand to fill the available width.  Now, when I open it to full width, then shrink the browser, I get scroll bars.  I want to work with my full, large, monitor and be confident that my users will still see it at the 100% width I intended, not at 110% or 200% or whatever.  Ugh!  This isn't a feature - it's a bug!

[Mike Nacey]

This is a great example of a derp moment. The old table editor had these capabilities. It's just about less frustrating to create similar content in Markdown (which should compel shame).

It's a shame that Atlassian spends so much effort in constantly changing the UX of things that were fine instead of doing something valuable, like, for instance creating PII planning board functionality or making its project/portfolio management features good.

[Marc Fearby]

How do I make the table fill the entire width of the page, no matter what size my browser is?

Shouldn't there be an option to "Make table full-width" the same as there is for the page itself?!

[Derek Price]

This may only be a problem with the preview in the editor.  After I saved the page, everything worked like I hoped it would.

[Neil Martin]

I'm here because all my tables are a fraction of my page size and centred - which looks stupid and most of the data is way to wide for the tiny columns I'm forced to use ? 

No matter what I do, I do NOT get the resize bars to stretch the table wider - just the 'grab' handles to move it - which doesn't seem to anything useful!

It's 2024 and people have wide screen monitors, so why force tables to be narrow and make it so hard/impossible to stretch tables to a sensible width!!

[Rory Baker]

Hey all, thank you for continuing to engage with us here.

A quick update to let you know that we've made a few further updates to tables, including;

• We've made table scaling behaviour consistent across edit and view mode - tables will scale down proportionally to a point, before breaking into a horizontal scroll - this is to provide some flexibility for viewing tables on smaller screens, while preventing excessive narrowing of columns where content becomes unreadable.
• We've added a full-width option - to set a table to full-width, use the resize handle to snap it to the guide near the edge of the page (see below gif). Tables set to full-width will span the width of the page regardless of viewport size, however will follow the scaling logic in the bullet point above.

• We've set tables to insert at full-width by default in full-width pages

A few other updates relevant to recent comments:

• A left alignment option for tables is on it's way. You can follow the ticket here for status updates.
• Tables currently cannot be resized in nested contexts (e.g. layouts or bodied macros) - if this feature is of interest to you then please vote for it here.
• As with other content in editor, tables cannot be resized larger than 1800px - this is being tracked as a suggestion here. Please note however, that it's possible to make your table content larger than the table container by dragging any of your columns borders to the right, past the table boundary. This will introduce a horizontal scroll in the table.

Thanks,
Rory

[Brian D Wall]

I can't figure out how to resize tables that are inside a "Table Filter" element.

... NVM, I just saw the latest post that points this out as limitation. Carry on.

[Dan Lamet]

Bugger.  Full-width ain't full width at all.  It's just wider limited width.  In my case, not wide enough, even though my window is plenty big.  Why is there a limit at all?  Granted "full width" is better than before.

[George Zhu]

Hi there, is it possible to make the table wider than the page? For one of my use cases, I prefer a table of low rows with many columns. The new editor limits the table width to my screen width. Thanks for help!

[wwwreynolds]

Using tables is very buggy.  Here's a few aggravating problems:

1) When a table is at the very end of a page, you can't move the cursor below it. To work around, I have to cut the entire table, add a blank line, then paste the table above the blank line.

2) Column resize doesn't always work. Resizing a column by dragging the column does not work and instead resizes other columns.  To work around this, I had to delete the table and start over.

3) Selecting all text in a cell is weird when a link exists.

I'm really disappointed in the quality of tables in Confluence.  You would think this is a novel concept that has never been done.

[Lisa Zanini]

Hi @Rory Baker 

It looks like this feature is not working when creating a template, is that correct? Is there any other trick to adjust the width on a Table in a Template?

[Jimm Johnson]

@Rory Baker - The Page Properties macros require tables so how did the nested tables issue NOT get detected during design & testing?  I'm going to add screen shots here, I cannot seem to add them to CONFCLOUD-77100.

The table size control (to the right of the table) does not appear to be available for tables within Page Properties macros and the tables auto-size incorrectly.

• Tables in Page Properties macros default to full width size, with no ability to shrink the whole table. I can only resize columns within that full table width.
• Any time I edit the page (or make certain other changes - seems like there are a few triggers for this, including random keystrokes or suddenly scrolling up or down the page), the tables resize in a way that the table exceeds the macro size and becomes unreadable.
  • If I distribute columns and save, the sizing still goes wonky.
  • If I distribute columns and slightly narrow the left column, the table seems to "hold" its size until next time I edit. 
• Every time I edit the page I have to tweak the size of every table within page properties macros. 
• Screen shots below are with a 2-column/right sidebar layout, 

1. View mode: Table in Page Properties macro

2. Edit mode:  Table auto re-sized beyond macro width (note horizontal scroll bar) - same issue if I reduce browser window size

3. Table adjustment 1: Distribute columns & save page, save page & view. Table renders incorrectly. (Changing browser size has no impact, table consistently displays wider than macro width. Editing templates shows the same behavior with tables inside the Page Properties macro.)

4. Table adjustment 2: Distribute columns, resize left column, save page & view. Table renders correctly. I have to do this every time I edit the page. (When I create new pages from a template with the Page Properties macro, tables in the macros are already wider than the macro width.)

[Rory Baker]

Hey all, thanks for the ongoing feedback - responding to a few recent comments below;

• @George Zhu  - yes it's possible to make the table wider than the page by forcing the table into overflow. To do this you can drag any of your column borders to the right of the table, past the right hand margin of the table - at this point the table should display a horizontal scroll indicating it's gone into overflow.
• @wwwreynolds  - thanks for bringing these to our attention and apologies you've hit some issues. We are investigating #1 and #3 and will provide an update when we can. Regarding #2 is there any further detail (or steps to repro) you can share about the scenarios in which column resizing is not working?
• @Lisa Zanini  - this should now be resolved, please let us know if you continue to face issues here.
• @Jimm Johnson - unfortunately we don't have any plans right now to enable resizing of tables in nested contexts. You can watch for any subsequent updates on the CONFCLOUD ticket which I believe you are already tracking. We have however been able to replicate the sizing issues you shared above regarding tables nested in a page properties macro within a layout. Thank you for such detailed repro steps! We are working on a determining a fix and will provide an update as soon as we can.

Thanks,

Rory