More ways to format table cells!

[#1]

Hi Community 👋

My name is Ethan, and I am a product manager on Atlassian's platform Editor. I'm here to share an update to how table cells can be formatted in the Editor.

Tables can be tricky to edit. A recurring pain point we heard from participants in our usability testing was the discoverability of the cell options chevron menu to access table cell formatting options. Whether it be changing the cell background colour, or merging cells, the menu to access these features can be very hard to spot.

We observed many users gravitate towards the floating toolbar as the intuitive place to find these options, and we thought that made sense. No matter where your selection ends up, these options can now always be accessed from the same, predictable location. No additional cognitive overhead required!

From this small change alone, we've observed over 10x higher engagement with table cell formatting features, including cell background colour, merging/splitting cells, and distributing columns.

Stay tuned for future improvements

We recognise there is much work to be done to further improve the tables editing experience. Addressing long standing tables issues (namely resizing) remains a top priority for our teams. We are always paying close attention to the customer feedback that comes through Atlassian's public issue tracker, the Atlassian Community, our Support teams, and various other channels to help inform our upcoming work.

Be sure to check out other handy tables features you might have missed:

• Resize table columns easily with the new Distribute Columns option

• Introducing Table Visualization! Quickly turn Confluence tables into compelling charts

[Louise Henderson]

Hi Ethan, thanks for the update.  When would we expect to see the new formatting options in confluence please?  Bit excited about the alphabetical sorting options.  Just checked it out and we don't seem to have these options in the floating toolbar.  All we can see in the table options is header row, header column and numbered column.  Many thanks, Louise

[Jo Leslie-McCran]

I spy "Sort column A-Z" on the animation above. Is this coming soon @Ethan Yew?

We have the update in our preview release environment, but "Sort" isn't an option