Resize Confluence tables to any width!

[#1]

Hi Community!

I’m Rory, a Product Manager on the Atlassian Editor team

I'm pleased to announce the arrival of Custom Table Widths - the freedom to resize tables to any width within the Confluence editor!

We are excited to bring this highly requested feature to life, empowering you as content creators to now match your table widths with the needs of your content.

With the rollout of this feature, we are also introducing the ability to resize tables within full-width pages - opening the door to more appropriately-sized tables in these pages and driving consistency in the editing experience.

How does it work?

Resize using the new handle

Resize your tables using the resize handle located on the right side of the table. Your columns will proportionally grow or shrink based on the table size that you set.

Pro tip: Use Distribute columns to quickly resize selected columns to the same width.

Resize in both fixed-width and full-width pages

Resize your tables to any width, whether you’re working on a fixed-width or full-width page. Your table width will be preserved as you toggle between page types.

 

Use guides to align your table with other content on the page

Like media resizing in the editor, use guides to align your table width with other content on the page. You can also use guides to set your table width to one of the previous three widths - centered, wide, or full-width.

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In case you missed them, we’ve recently rolled out a number of other updates to tables;

• Resize table columns easily with the new Distribute Columns option

• More ways to format table cells!

• Announcing Table Extensibility to better visualize data in Confluence

Custom Table Widths will be progressively rolling out over the next month, so if you don’t see it on Confluence today, you will soon!

Please let us know what you think or ask any questions in the comments below - we would your feedback.

[Maurice Pasman]

This is unbelievable. Still no responsive option, like the old editor has supported from the beginning. 

[Barbara Szczesniak]

@Rory Baker I like this new feature, but it looks like the table is always centered on the page. Is there a way to change the table width and then left-align the table within whatever page width you are using.

[Pierre Morel]

@Rory Baker , this is great feature, but why can't we align the table to the left of the page. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Inserting-Table-Change/qaq-p/2483419 is suggesting to use Layouts but that's not really convenient. Can we have the same options as images?

[Rory Baker]

Hey all, thanks for your feedback on this feature!

@Pierre Morel  and @Barbara Szczesniak - as of right now we don't have any immediate plans to introduce additional alignment options for tables, however I've created a suggestion in JAC to track this request - if you think this would be valuable to you, please can I ask you to add your vote to the ticket. In the meantime I would also agree with the recommendation here to use layouts as the best workaround.

@Maurice Pasman - thanks for the feedback regarding responsive tables. Similar to above we don't have any immediate plans to introduce this feature right now, however we are considering it in our longer term roadmap (next 12 months). Best to keep an eye on the related JAC ticket for updates.

[Maurice Pasman]

Hi @Rory Baker , funny how you refer to it as "introducing a new feature", when in fact, this functionality has been part of Confluence since the beginning (in the old editor).

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

It's here, it's here, it's finally here! Thanks team!
Feel free to share the good news with your team: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4hEi26qohck

[Pierre Morel]

Another issue with this new feature is that you cannot select "Full Width". This means that if I author a page on a wide screen and make the table wide (because I can), then the table will have horizontal scrollbar whenever it shows on a slightly narrower screen. It does actually look terrible when the table show 95% of the way. In this case, I didn't really intent to resize the table, I just want to make it match the page width. Surprised that this didn't come up during the design.

[Barbara Szczesniak]

I see the same issue as @Pierre Morel where my table ends up with horizontal scroll bars, instead of adjusting the wrapping of text to fit in the space.

[Jay MacEachern]

This change has made PDF exports with tables dreadful. All other elements are getting set to page size, but the tables are always too small in width, even with custom CSS.

[Rory Baker]

Hey @Pierre Morel and @Barbara Szczesniak, with the rollout of this feature tables now behave as follows;

• In edit mode - tables show at their true (fixed) width. This is to ensure editors see the table at the size the author intended, and so that formatting of content within the table is preserved.
• In view mode - tables will proportionally scale down to a point. This is to provide some flexibility for viewing tables on smaller screens, while preventing excessive narrowing of columns that content becomes unreadable. It’s also to account for the left hand navigation bar which when expanded will occupy screen real estate. Tables should however be WYSIWYG between edit mode and view mode when the left hand nav is collapsed.

We’ve tried to simplify the behaviour here as much as possible for now, but we do have plans to further iterate on it in the next 6-12m, in particular to revisit responsive tables - watch this space!

Thanks again for your feedback here, as always we really appreciate it!

[Rory Baker]

Hey @Jay MacEachern sorry to hear you're having issues with the PDF exporter. I'm investigating this further with the team.

If there are any further details (e.g. steps to replicate, screenshots) that you can share please would you be able to send me an email at rbaker@atlassian.com. Thank you

[Phil Bustin]

This modification has changed the behavior as follows:

Prior to the change, when I pasted one table at the beginning of the gray-font default prompt below the title, and then selected the next line and pasted another table, both tables defaulted to the full width.

After the modification, even though the first table defaults to the full width, the second table defaults to a smaller centered width, and I have to drag the guide all the way to the right to expand the second table to the full width.

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Love it - takk!

[John Fenger]

Mixed bag of feedback on this one. 

Extra steps on every page

As someone who exclusively uses full width pages this change is infuriating. 100% of the time i have to do this:

1. Add table
2. Make my browsers larger than the max page size
3. Drag the table to be the full width of the page.  
4. Add 2nd table (repeat)

Why is this not at least left aligned? 

I mean a tiny center aligned table in the middle of a page looks bad, typically one would expect the default state to be the most commonly used state.  Not the least desirable state.   Left aligned, Full width or and lastly center aligned.  

Pros

I like the ability to adjust the size just wish i could make it default to something more useable, and didn't add extra work to every page i make all day.

[Phil Bustin]

I add my first table at the beginning of the gray-font prompt line (that begins "Did you know...".  That results in the first table at full width.

[Phil Bustin]

I created a template as a workaround for the two tables I use on each page that I add, but it turns out that first rows on the two tables I inserted on the template have a gray fill that I don't want. 

I inserted a blank table in the template, expanded it, copied it, and pasted it below.  When I add a page, I select my template, click on the first cell of each table, and paste my actual table into the first cell of the template table.

As I said, though, I can't use the template tables because the first rows contain gray fill.

[Jay MacEachern]

@Rory Baker Apologies for the delay as was out of office. Below are examples of before and after the recent changes. 

[Matt Bordas]

@Rory Baker good to see updates to the tables. Are you planning on allowing the rows to be reordered via drag and drop anytime soon? That's a huge pain point that most modern wiki/tools support. e.g. Notion, Excel, Sheets, etc.

Right now, you have to delete and re-add a row if you want to move it up or down.

[Mike Forst]

This new update has made tables much worse to work with than before. The lack of an "always full-width" option has made it impossible to have a consistent table size now relative to the page. If we author a page with a table on a large display, that table always end up having a horizontal scroll bar on it when viewed on a smaller display. If it's edited on a smaller display, anyone viewing on a larger one will see a little table centered in the middle.

The only workaround I've found so far is to embed each table into something else like a page properties macro. That seems to pin it to work as expected. Tables should be full width regardless of the screen size or layout width if the handle has been dragged over to the edge.

This is a pretty big functionality regression without an "always full width, I don't care if it looks bad" option. All my tables look inconsistent and are much harder for users to read.

[Ruben Lado]

Hello. If a table is created inside the tabs macro, it appears full width and there is no way to resize it. The bar that should appear on the right is not present. Can you please provide a fix to this?

[Phil Bustin]

Ruben, where would I find the tabs macro, please?

[Roberta Lombardy]

I understand the column resizing options. However, in edit mode they are where I want them. When I publish, they squish down. How can I keep them as I need them without having users always go into edit mode?

[Phil Bustin]

I would like to be able to configure a blank 4-column table in my template, such that the first and third columns are right-justified and bold; and then have the option (similar to the paste function in Word) to past an unformatted table into the template table, without overriding the template configurations.  (I regcognize this is a difficult enhancement not likely to be implemented.)

[Michael Woffenden]

The new tables in Confluence Cloud are a total unabashed nightmare.

When editing they have one look, after publishing the table reverts to 1800px automatically (very bad indeed!!!) and adds a scroll bar.

I urge Atlassian to bring back the old nicely behaved tables (as in server), and the responsive capability too.

Gosh, these are basic Web Editing 101 issues, why are we struggling so much in Nov 2023?

[Todd Cushard]

I have a wide screen monitor and the table width is still limited to a maximum fixed width. Why? For my team's use, we want to support wider tables, width that will take up all of the available space on our wide screen monitors.