Can you sort table columns in Confluence?

[Jason Vance]

Just wondering if anyone has found a way to sort tables by column in confluence. This would be extremely handy ...

[Russell · Accepted solution]

No need to use table-plus any more for a basic table sort:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Working+with+Tables

[mureinik]

Updated link:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/tables-136463.html

[Pressacco]

It appears that as of October 2020, Atlassian's Confluence still does not allow you to sort a table by column.

As mureinik has pointed out, the reader can temporarily sort a table after it has been published: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/tables-136463.html

But as soon as you re-load or republish the page... the table defaults back to the original sort order.

[Freedom Is Not Anarchy]

(1) MediaWiki, www.wikipedia.com, builds the ability to sort, directly into their markup language, using this "sortable", construct:

{| class="wikitable sortable"

(2) By contrast, Atlassian seems to be asking me to download the "Table Filter Plugin", but then it complained about,

"This plugin has one or more modules with missing dependencies."

(3) I then clicked one of the confusing UI elements. Everything did go "pastel green", but I do not know if it is actually working.

The "missing dependancy" was with an external vendor named , "com.stiltsoft.confluence.plugin.tablefilter.tablefilter"

(4) Lame/confusing.

[Katerina Kovriga {Stiltsoft}]

You can use the Table Filter and Charts for Confluence app to sort your Confluence tables.

Just wrap your table in the Table Filter macro and apply the default sorting order:

[Jeison]

Hi there!

Just try this and see if it works for ya:

While editing content in Confluence, click on Insert -> Wiki Markup.

Then you can type the following code as an example of a sortable table with 3 columns:

{table-plus:sortIcon=true}
|| Name  || Age  || ID  ||
| Mark | 20 | 400 |
| John | 41 | 100 |
| Anna | 19 | 300 |
| Gary | 12 | 200 |
{table-plus}

Modify the attributes and data as you wish.

Cheers :)

[Cyrille Martin]

Yes, you can with the plugin "Table Plugin"

[William Zanchet [Atlassian]]

Hi @Michael Dave,

Based in your scenario, I tried to reproduced the same behavior but I couldn't. Here worked fine, let me share the steps that I did, so you can correct me if I jumped any step:

1. Create a brand new page, with a Table 3x3. Like this one:
   Screen Shot 2015-01-06 at 10.52.20.png
2. I saved it, and I could sort the columns correctly.
3. I click on Edit and copied the table, and created a new page, then pasted my table.
4. Worked fine.
5. Copied the table in the "View" mode, created a third page, and pasted there.
6. Worked fine.

I was able to do this test against Confluence 5.6.3. Would you mind letting me know what is the version that you tried it? So I can verify if it's a bug?

About your last statement, you're correct we shouldn't need a plugin for such basic functionality, that's why we already implemented this feature as a bundled.

If you would like to have one of our engineers working on this case with you, I would suggest you to create a ticket in our Support System: https://support.atlassian.com otherwise, we can still work through Answers.

Cheers,
WZ

[Michael Dave]

It is beyond my comprehension why Atlassian would go out of its way to complicate a trivially simple matter.

I cut and pasted a table and while I have the table in Confluence 5 now, it doesn't show the sort icon they refer to at this URL: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Working+with+Tables#WorkingwithTables-Sortingthetableinviewmode

The search of documentation doesn't yield any results either.

If anyone at Atlassian is reading, seriously, why would you go out of your way to make things hard for your users?  The markup is such a simple tool.  Why should I need a "plugin" for basic functionality?

[Olivier Bories]

Hello Dave,

I stumbled on this question and it's more a reply for others than for you (since it's been quite a long time since you asked this  ) and I had the same problem. In fact to allow a table to be sorted it need to have a header column defined (it's done using one of these 2 buttons in the table bar :  image2016-11-16 9:24:57.png ) and after that the buttons will appears in view mode.

Cheers,

Olivier

[nlias]

I went through password recovery just so I could log in and thank @Olivier Bories  :) 

[Deleted user]

Hi Jason,

Table column sorting feature has been rolled out by Atlassian in confluence 4.3 version. Currently, I'm using Confluence 6.12.2 and we can do the sorting.

Regards,
Raja

[Michael Dave]

William Zanchet, I cut and pasted a table from Excel.  The version of confluence I'm using is 5.5.2.  I just retried it and reproduced the problem easily.  Just do the following.

1. Create a table in Excel
2. Copy all contents and paste in a COnfluence WIKI page
3. Make the 1st row a "heading row" using the "heading row" icon
4. Save the page 

I appreciate you trying to help me but I think you may have missed my basic point which is this.  Why should basic functionality such as making a table sortable (or not) require a user to engage an engineer?  Further, why is this not in any of the help pages?

I really don't want to spend time creating tickets and such.  I have way too much to do already.  As a user, to give an analogy, this is similar to a car company telling me "oh, you say its hard to find how to open the trunk from the car and you have to do it manually using your key?  Why don't you call our 800 number and file a problem report our customer support people will help you".  Do you think that's a good user experience?

Clearly, I'm not the only user experiencing this difficulty as you can see in this thread.  If I were Atlassian, I'd take this kind of issue as a rather strong condemnation of how the software is designed.  A number of things could be done such as:

• Fixing online documentation to show how columns can be sorted and ensuring the answer is found easily in search.
• Fixing markup implemention to allow people to add markup easily.  Trying to "help" user by taking away their ability to change WIKI markup of the page is not helpful.
• Ensuring this kind of basic stuff never escapes regression testing in the future.

Ok, I think that's enough said.  I'll leave it at that.  Atlassian can decide what they want to do.  While I see Atlassian engineers are always willing to help (which is good), I do not see a focus on trying to address the root cause which is very poor design.  In your drive to provide a WYSIWYG editor, you've effectively destroyed the ability of the user to do their own formatting via WIKI markup.  To me, that's the kind of thing Microsoft would do i.e. make user reliant on their way of doing things.  That's not a good model to follow.

[Tom Birch Hansen]

There is a reported bug abot sorting not working when inserting from excel. (https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-30417). It was reported back in 2013, but Atlassian still haven't got round to fixing this. :-(

[Jason Vance]

thank you Cyrille .... I found this plugin shortly after asking my question ... I also found the Table Filter Plugin, which appears to have a bit more functionality. Unfortunately, I'm having a bit of trouble in my Hosted instance with installing plugins at the moment, so I cannot comment on either right now. As soon as I get this resolved, I'll post my findings.

Jason