Is there a way to remove a section or column without its content being deleted or apply a section or column around existing content?

Question

When using the old wiki markup, it was very easy to go in and apply the section and column tags around content -- especially beneficial to use after the content is written and then you want to provide some formatting.

When I add a section or column, then I have to copy and paste content in to it.

However, if I remove a column or section, it deletes the content. So, I have to copy the content out first and then delete it.  This is very tedious when you have columns within sections.

Is there a better way to do this or will the be addressed to just remove the tags instead of the content, too?

Karie Kelly1 · Answer

You cannot remove the section or column without having its contents also removed. You have to cut the content out, paste it outside of the section or column macro, and then remove the macro.  Much more work than when we could go directly to the markup and just remove the tags.

Karie Kelly1 · Answer

I have seen that.  But  I have not figured out how to use that feature and have different layouts on the same page.  For example, the top is one column, then I have two columns below that, a horizontal line that goes between another two columns below that.  I use the line as a clean separator because each column contains a gadget that has varfying lengths and I want the gadgets to start at the same place.

Or there are layouts where you want a small column for a top section to contain a set of topics... Very similar to current atlassian documents.  But then the rest of the page is a single section or column.

It just has taken several clicks to remove a macro like a column or a note when you just want to remove the formatting around the content, not the content itself.  It was very easy in the old wiki markup because I could manually just remove the tags.

TimT · Answer

Confluence now supports multi-column layouts without the use of the section or column macros. It's not quite as flexible, but it's much easier to use, more visual, and handles changing layouts more smoothly.

Check it out here: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Working+with+page+layouts+and+columns+and+sections