How do you move a column or row in a table in the New Editing Experience

[Deleted user]

I do not see any way to move a row or a column in a table when using the New Editing Experience pages. Does anyone know how to do this? (I am using Confluence Cloud)

Thank you!

Joseph

[Shannon S · Accepted solution]

Hello Joseph,

Thank you for contacting us about this! It's not currently possible to reorder a row or column in tables in the new editor. We have a feature request for this below:

• CONFCLOUD-25847 Drag & Drop to reorder table rows

Please vote on this request and you will automatically be added to the list of watchers and receive updates on this in the future.

Let me know if you have any questions about that.

Regards,

Shannon 

[Deleted user]

Thank you Shannon. I voted on that item. So to be clear. There is currently no way to move a row or a column of a table within Confluence? As a work around I am currently copying into Excel and then pasting back when I have it reordered. 

[Shannon S]

Hi Joseph,

To confirm, there is not a way to move a row or column of a table within Confluence. Thank you for your vote, and I hope we can see this soon! 

Regards,

Shannon

[Daniel Brumund]

Hi Shannon,

Is it possible to cut/paste a table column or row? If not, I'm really just wondering why your developers would remove such an essential feature? It's making the user experience significantly less user-friendly for me... Sorry, just a bit of a frustrated rant about improvements that actually make things worse :-(

[Shannon S]

Hi Daniel,

I've tried, but it's also not possible to cut and paste rows in the table. I had to create new rows and re-enter or paste the text into each cell individually.

Edit: What you will be able to do is cut the text itself. So, click at the start of the row or column to select the whole section, and type ctrl+X (or cmd+x on macOS). Then you can create a new row/column where you want the text to go, and paste it there. But be aware that if you don't create a new row or column, if you paste it will just overwrite the existing data.

This feature is of course very popular so I can see this one gathering traction quickly. I would recommend watching the feature, but also keep an eye on the Confluence Cloud Editor roadmap for any other updates.

I just thought of a workaround that might work for you, and I tested it so I can confirm it works. I added it as a comment on the feature request:

I was able to re-order some columns in a table using Excel as a workaround.

1. Select the table in Confluence by clicking the corner of the table, and copying to my clipboard.
2. Paste the table into a clean Excel spreadsheet.
3. I moved the columns as desired while holding down the SHIFT key and using this procedure: https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2014/01/23/swap-excel-columns/
4. I then copied the table in Excel, and pasted it on top of the table in Confluence, replacing the data.

 There's currently a bug related to copying and pasting single-digit decimals into Confluence. Please be aware of this in case you have any decimals in your table: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-68744

Let me know if that could help!

Regards,

Shannon

[Daniel Brumund]

Hi Shannon,

Thank you for the quick response and for describing the workaround. I really appreciate it - but the workaround really is too time-consuming...

Is it possible for me to roll back to the 'old way' of editing tables etc. on an existing document? I'd much rather stick to the old editor as long as so many features are still missing in the new editor.

Thanks!

Daniel

[Shannon S]

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for the follow-up. I'm not sure if you saw that I added some additional text, but you CAN copy and paste the contents rows and columns in Confluence, you just need to manually create the new rows/columns that you want to paste the info into. 

It's similar to your idea to copy and paste rows except there's one extra step to create a new row or column.

Otherwise, there's no way to switch back to the old editor at this point. My apologies.

Take care,

Shannon

[Daniel Brumund]

Hi Shannon,

I appreciate your support.

However, this doesn't work. The issue is this: The old editor had functions for cutting, copying and pasting table rows and table columns. These are vita functions for anyone having to work with tables.

Therefore, I'd very much appreciate if you could highlight these as priority issues to be implemented in the new editor. Why your developers would delete such vital features in the first place is rather hard to understand...

[Shannon S]

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for clarifying. I'm sorry to hear that you won't be able to workaround this by copying and pasting the columns and rows to their new locations, but I can understand your requirement to simply drag and drop. 

At this time I don't have any other workarounds I can suggest besides the two that I shared here, but do let me know if you have any other questions or concerns. 

Regards,

Shannon

[Josh Wickham]

> This feature is of course very popular so I can see this one gathering traction quickly.

6 months later, still can't move rows/columns...

[Ned Sahin]

What Atlassian says: "Please vote on this feature request and if it gets enough votes we'll develop it!"

What Atlassian means: "Please waste your time filling out and voting for feature requests for basic features that everyone needs so that we can ignore them and instead spend our time re-arranging the user interface and designing a new logo!"

[Torquil Harkness]

Making tabled lists for project planning, in which the lists are fixed and cannot be moved :-(  What kind of project has planning items that do not change from the first time they are added to the list...  Came here looking for an answer to how to move rows up and down a table, and cannot understand that 30 years after using tables for organising tasks on my old x86 in the 90s, that we are not including this kind of thing in basic functionality in an MVP. :-(

[Brice Le Pouder]

It's not currently possible to reorder a row or column in tables in the new editor. 

What is it ? Middle age ?

[Torquil Harkness]

...

[Adrian Black]

Incredible omission of a simple critical feature - makes large tables near unworkable

[mike.trilford]

I agree with Adrian! I'm very surprised we can't drag / shift a column upwards etc.

It made me feel embarrassed that I couldn't find the option, then it turns out it doesn't exist.

[Michael Schmitz]

Did COVID somehow disproportionately affect the Atlassian developers that work on data tables?   

Yikes.

[Pascal]

What if it did, @Michael Schmitz ? We don't know, but there's a slim chance: this thing has had a big impact on priorities too.

I'm on a free plan now, so I just sit this one out. If you're a paying customer, especially with a large user base, I totally get your frustration.

[Torquil Harkness]

I believe we still pay for some version or another due to some Dev use, but for all of our Product Management we have now moved away from Confluence to Aha! It has a good framework for project management. So I will sit on the sidelines and watch the mayhem with you.

[Gonçalo Oliveira]

This feature is of course very popular so I can see this one gathering traction quickly.

Almost 3.5 years later, still can't move rows/columns...

[Manish Ayachit]

Is this feature even being worked on? Hard to believe it isn't available yet.  Workflow is really slowing down without being able to slide around rows and columns.  Please add feature ASAP. 

[Torquil Harkness]

They have had 3 years, and didnt include it in the product redesign.. you know they aren't adding it :-) We may as well all go back to Google Docs :-)

[Jean-Charles Sorin]

I don't understand how a basic feature is not prioritized. It will be great to have some updates there :( 

[Steven Salmon]

I just cut and paste rows. Create an empty row where you want it to go, select the row you want to move, right click-cut, place your cursor in the first cell of your new row, right click-paste.

[Allison Bloodworth]

Thanks Steven, that worked for me! 

[Joel Wesseling]

Everyone knows that drag and drop takes 2 years to develop...

[kilaka]

Almost 3 years now!

[caa]

Is this a joke?
3 years to do a row move in a table, and it's still not there.

[Vaclav Elias]

Not a joke, there is a condition:

if (votesCount >= 1000) MoveToSprint(GetNextSprint());

[Ryan Evans]

843 votes as of today, come on Team lets get this over the line!

[Vaclav Elias]

Sadly, the logic was updated by inflation😟

if (votesCount >= 1000 + GetInflation()) MoveToSprint(GetNextSprint());

The BA adds inflation everywhere 😡.

[kilaka]

Almost 3 years now...

[Annesh Singh]

Any update on this

[Peter Anderson]

Is there an update on this? It doesn't appear this issue has been resolved.

[Chase Barrett]

Love to see this fixed too and I upvoted the issue.

Another workaround:

• Create an order column
• Populate column with alphabetical sequence ("aaa", "bbb", ...)
• Sort the table on your order column:
  
  • In edit mode, select the "cell options" popup menu in the upper right corner of the column header, then select "Sort column A -> Z"
  • In view mode, simply click the sort arrow when you hover over the right side of the column header
• As time goes on and you need to maintain your (perhaps sizable) table, modify the cell values in your order column to arrange rows where you want them, then re-sort the table.

[Andrei Chernoprudov]

The best way so far, thanks!

[robfor01]

Another alternative for moving rows is the source editor of Confluence.

1. Click 'Edit'.
2. Go to the source editor (top right: <>).
3. Look for where the rows begin and end, with the <tr> and </tr> tags. It will help you to navigate the table in the source view.
4. Copy or cut the whole row.
5. Move the cursor to between the two rows you want this row to be.
6. Paste.
7. Return to the normal view.

[Deleted user]

I'd love to see this feature but I found a substitute for now:

• select row to move + cmd + x to cut the row
• go to cell next to which you want to move this row
• ctrl + opt + up arrow (or down) to add a row
• select new row cmd+v to paste the row

[rick thaxter]

I have 4 columns in a table. If I try to copy an entire row to a new one, it just splits the first 2 columns into two and pastes the content into them, leaving 2 empty cells to the right.