Hi @Michael Green,
What you're seeing is the new Jira work items macro in the Confluence Cloud editor, and that large panel with the magnifying glass is its built-in empty state. The macro shows "We couldn't find anything matching your search" whenever the configured filter or JQL returns zero work items, instead of drawing the column headers with no rows underneath.
There is no setting to swap that for an empty table. Everything the macro lets you configure sits around the query and the output, not the empty result:
- the search itself, as a basic keyword and filter search or as JQL
- which columns appear, and the order they appear in
- a count view, showing just the number of matching work items
- the width of the rendered list
None of those touch the empty-state graphic, so a columns-only table with no records is not something the macro produces today. One thing worth knowing as well: the old Jira Legacy macro, which rendered a plain static table, is no longer a fallback for this on Cloud. As of 9 April 2026 it became the Jira Data Center macro in the cloud editor and stopped supporting Jira Cloud work items, so for Cloud issues the Jira work items macro is the one to use.
Since the behavior you want is not configurable, the place to push for it is the in-product Give feedback option in Confluence. Atlassian has been actively closing parity gaps on this macro, so an empty-table state is a reasonable thing to add. The macro's current options are documented here: Display Jira work items in a list, and the Legacy change is explained here: The Jira Legacy macro is becoming the Jira Data Center macro.
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