Feature request: Allow numbered lists to continue either side of an info/macro

[James Lowe]

Came out of https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Questions-for-Confluence/How-can-I-continue-a-numbered-list/qaq-p/1021094?utm_source=atlcomm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=immediate_general_reply&utm_content=topic

For example an 'info' box is not able to part of a numbered list and, at the same time, there is no way to 'continue' the numbering sequence either side of the info box/macrp.

e.g

I'd like

1. Foo

2. Bar

Info box: blah blah

3. Baz

4. Boo

Instead I end up with

1. Foo

2. Bar

Info box: blah blah

1. Baz

2. Boo

I'd also like to add that in older versions of 'wiki' pages before we moved to cloud,  could add an info box (any object actual;y) to a numbered list and then delete the number so it was pushed down to the next line as a way to get what I wanted

e.g

1. Foo

2. Bar

3. Info Box: blah blah

4. Baz

5. Boo

Then 'backspace delete' the info box number so that

1. Foo

2. Bar

   Info Box: blah blah

3. Baz

4. Boo

[Jay Antoney · Accepted solution]

Please vote for this feature over on the Issues page

Hey all, I've come across this - so if you're wanting the feature, please go hit VOTE on this issue.

[CONFCLOUD-70868] Continuous numbered list between layouts - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.

[Nicholas Wade]

So you did not see Marcus O_Brien Feb 23, 2022 below..... ah well... 

[Jay Antoney]

Nicholas.... Do you not understand how dates work? Feb comes after Jan... I was here first 😕

Anyway - I've taken this to Twitter lol... I'm not hopeful
Go make some noise over here
https://twitter.com/jayantoney/status/1519809020701601792

[Nicholas Wade]

Hahah... yes, you were first Jay (Yipee!) and I apologise for not respecting your calendar ranking.

I've just noticed as well that we have one engineer Shannon S (engineer) who says she's working on ticket 70868 and Divya Sriram, a PM on the Confluence team working on 7794

Ludicrous.

[Jay Antoney]

oooo.... Got this email today - Maybe this means that lots of Atlassian staff are looking at this as they prepare to put it into the roadmap!

.... dw - I'm not actually being serious. lol

[Nicholas Wade]

... but don't you know, they extend "Love Confluence" month for another 9 months!

[Nicholas Wade]

Hello Mandy,

I probably overstepped the boundaries with that ‘roses are red…etc’ thing (which I felt was ridiculing and demeaning to users like myself who have genuine work day problems with Confluence), or was it one of my more abrasive replies to the message board, or my alluding to Confluence and a 3 wheeled car on your policy feedback? Either way, yes, it’s frustration coming out. Your product is making my work a nightmare on a daily basis and I don’t seem to have got your attention – which is a common theme on the community board. Not sure about my language though, unless it is the use of ‘wally’ but okay, I’ll keep it zipped up. Frankly, I’m not concerned about the rest of the product - I mean, like how many ways can you use a biro? But for sure, if you want to engage, I’ll be happy to do so, if we can make it a bit more open than 1 to 1, as there are a lot of others out there with a gripe or two, and in all fairness I think they should know the reasons for taking a major hit with their work each day, so I’d suggest some forum that we can all use to query and remark (without abuse). Alternatively, you could simply tie all those requests for resequencing numbered lists into one reply – because that’s part of the problem – you, Confluence don’t appear to be listening.

I don’t know what you’re thinking, but my plan all along has been to raise the temperature until we get a response – that’s this reply from you. I have no interest in further frequenting your communities. In fact, I guarantee that after this is settled, I will not comment on anything! – knock me out now if you like, because frankly, I feel totally let down by Atlassian.

From: Mandy Ross <mross2@atlassian.com>
Sent: 03 March 2022 21:30
To: Nicholas Wade 
Subject: Your posts in the Atlassian Confluence collection

 Hello Nicholas, 

I'm Mandy with the Atlassian Community. I gather from your posts in our forums today you are very, very upset about numbered lists in Confluence. I'm so sorry that Confluence is falling short of your expectations. However, the language and tone you used violates our terms of service. The Community is for all Atlassian customers, and we want to keep it a friendly place, so I'm respectfully asking you to tone it down. 

I'd like to connect you with our Confluence product team so that you can engage in a healthy and productive conversation, but I will need your assurances that you'll be able to use language that is appropriate and professional. Is that something you might be interested in?

 Best regards, 

 Mandy

 --

Mandy ross

Community Program Manager - Product and Design

[Emmanuel Sullivan]

Mandy,

The numbered list is SUPER frustrating. I just signed up and now considering another platform because I spent so much time trying to continue numbering. Then when I want to add bullets in between it changes the numbering to bullets. 

We shouldn't have to use a soft return (shift+enter) to manipulate the system or manually add numbering.

This is so basic to have as a feature, it's UNBELIEVABLE!

Please have your product team review this. It's Tech Writing 101.

[Nicholas Wade]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Confluence.... 

Have a nice dayeeeee....

[Marcus O'Brien]

Can everyone (if they haven't already), visit this page

[CONFCLOUD-70868] Continuous numbered list between layouts - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.

And click on "Vote for this" on top right under people > Votes.

Thanks.

[Nicholas Wade]

Marcus, hi, I appreciate what you think you are trying to achieve but frankly, it's not going to work for several reasons.

Firstly, you ask people to revisit the vote page - well, if they have already voted then it simply removes their vote like a kind of toggle switch.

If they read your message (which is just one out of many messages in several other similar threads, then they are probably one of the 26 who may have voted already.

I've seen votes for improvements on the site that have around 500 votes or more and STILL can't raise the interest of the dodo's who run the whole voting system.  I'm assuming because Dev's have set a magic number below which they simply won't react.

From a Dev point of view it all looks hunky-dory, they've got a system, it show's votes end of story... but it's not collating votes, it does not account for people who search for the subject and then after seeing the answer simply shrug and give up - why should they vote if the issue has already been mentioned? Hence... few votes.

The only way round this is to try and convince Atassian marketing and sales by hammering them with intemperate messages from your management and see potential bad publicity you may generate in the various IT review sites. Other than that Dev's are notoriously blind and short-sighted, grumpy and stubborn, so you won't get any joy there.

[Nicholas Wade]

I don't believe it! I simply don't believe it! February 28th and the Confluence update has rolled out make.page  so that you don't have to click the + icon to create a page. What a gammy useless, pointless unmemorable option this is. Like, the amount of time taken to write the script to do this is probably more than the time required to make numbered lists restart their sequence after being interrupted. But no, some wally Dev decided that make.page was vastly more important. Tie me kangaroo down sport... I'm going to whack it with a cricket bat!

[James Lowe]

It won't be a 'wally dev' it will be an ignorant PM I expect. The dev is 'just following orders/sprints or whatever it is they do these days'. Hence the reason it would be really useful to actually get some feedback from someone (ANYONE) at Atlassian.

[Nicholas Wade]

James, see my 4th March 22

[Suvarna Gaikwad]

@James Lowe I answered similar question yesterday. Please see here https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Numbered-list-in-confluence/qaq-p/1809669#M218819

[James Lowe]

I don't see any 'solution' here from that case. Adjusting an indent is not the same as 'continue numbering' nor does it answer the case about info boxes (and similar) not even being able to be numbered.

I see a conversation about adjusting indents and a reply saying it doesn't work for X which then points to yet another page that talks about setting widths.

[Suvarna Gaikwad]

@James Lowe same applies to panel macro as well. As info panel is set to full width by default and we cannot alter it's width just like table macro. Hence making it impossible to continue numbering with any macro inline with numbered list. This is for confluence cloud.

[James Lowe]

You're conflating a limitation of displaying panels with auto-numbering.

I want to be able to continue numbering *regardless* of what I decide to put in the middle of thos enumbers and whatever software-coding regression Atalassian introduce (which I think this is - see below)

This is how word does it

Also this was not something that was ever an issue in the version of confluence we were using on prem last year.

Also, while I don't want to get into techncialities on telling you how to design software, you said:

As info panel is set to full width by default and we cannot alter it's width just like table macro.

This is meaningless to users.

and as someone who knows enough to be dangerous, full width should be 'whatever spaceis left' not some 'nothing else can exist here on this line' behaviour.

So the info panel problem of always using full width is orthoganal to this issue as far as I  can tell. If I want my panel to exist outside of the numbered list (thereby working around this 'full width problem) I still cannot 'continue' numbering.

This means that on existing wiki pages with many numbered steps I cannot now insert panels easily (if at all) later on or I have to now delete al the auto-numbered sections and go back over the entire page and hand number everything.

So again, your suggestion is not a solution. It is a workaround at best and not a very convenient one for existing pages.

[Marcus O'Brien]

I don't mind suggesting how to implement a quick fix so we get what we need here, and then there could be a proper redesign later. It's a simple way to give us the ability to do what we need without redesigning anything else (i.e. changing the info box default width etc.) 

Confluence has a current limitation on its list object, whereby the numbering always starts at 1. Simply change this so we can set it to what we want. We can then have numerous lists with objects at the end i.e. info box, and the next list appearing continuous as we simply set the start number manually.

Eg

1. List object 1

2. List object 1

<Item that spells disaster for list - eg info box>

3. List object 2 - new list object - with start set to 3

4. List object 2

[Harry Alexander]

Agreed,  just let us start with what ever number or letter we want.  

[Nicholas Wade]

Why are the comments on the community pages not organised by date. How hard can it be?

[Brian Nakamoto]

I guess Atlassian doesn't want us to realize that people have been asking for a solution for more than a decade, but it probably is just the result of another questionable update like when they changed the comment sort order for all Jira users in my org.

[Violet Green]

Count me in too! - this is super constraining and creating lots of extra work, especially when collaborating with other users who don't understand the soft return workaround (shift+Enter). I'm seeing instances where users use some auto-numbering, but then add hand-typed numbering. The two don't align when exported and I have to go back in and manually fix to use the workaround way.
I can't wait for the update!

[Nicholas Wade]

You'll have a long wait... this was a problem a couple of years ago. Devs seem to think that we all write in code blocks. The actual, physical action to alter the HTML back to continue the numbering is painfully simple to do - just add a start element for the reset <ol> as in <ol start="5">. Trouble is, you can't then save the page. It really is creating a major headache....

[Brian Nakamoto]

I think the hack Nicholas describes only works with self-hosted Confluence so Confluence Cloud customers like my org have been SOL. I can understand why Confluence Cloud doesn't support the Confluence source editor plugin but it still amazes me that Atlassian hasn't acted on this feature request since they introduced Confluence. I've only been hoping for a solution since 2018.

P.S. I think Atlassian is getting tired of me lamenting their lack of concern for their customers (i.e. referencing my other post, /t5/Confluence-questions/Re-Re-How-to-continue-a-numbered-list/qaq-p/926233/comment-id/123519#M123519):

[James Lowe]

What is just as frustrating as having to renumber everything manually is that the UI hijacks my manual numbering and turns it back into 'automatic' numbering - meaning that I have to 'care' how re-number manually.

See attached gif

[James Lowe]

What is actually as frustrating as having to renumber everything manually is that the UI hijacks my manual numbering and turns it into 'automatic' numbering - meaning that I have to 'care' how re-number manually. Did anyone actually think this through?

[Nicholas Wade]

Look at it from a Dev perspective. They write code and have inline commenting.. so why would they think we need a word processor?

[Jay Antoney]

+1 as well! I've just worked around it until now and today I became so annoyed I went looking for answers. Please add this...

[Nicholas Wade]

this...

[Cedric Bernard]

+1 on this. Key requirement 

[Ben Marsh]

+1 on this too. This is blocking me from representing information the way I need and is extremely frustrating as such.

[Andrew Morley]

Yeah, even manually editing HTML, there's the ability to add start="3" to an <ol> element built in to HTML, but the confluence editor strips it out, which is stupid, because it's valid. Browsers support it, so why doesn't confluence?

[dreytset]

+1 on this. The lack of a continue numbering option significantly limits the value of macros for step-by-step guides, which makes Confluence less useful for such use cases.