How can I change the width of a table?

[Stuart McMullin]

As the title suggests, I have a table I'd like to shrink down with the end goal of having multiple tables side by side. How can I do this? Thanks!

[Geoff Mether _Togetha Group_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Stuart McMullin 

I thought a video of layouts and tables - might be useful. Video Link

You could try using a combination of layouts and tables - to get them side by side.  

Good luck!

G

[Deleted user]

This seems like a massively convoluted "workaround" for a simple function used in documentation universally.

[Jonathan Le]

This is what I did too, but I didn't see this video until I posted the same answer.

[Marc]

This worked for me, but it's not very intuitive to be honest. Even myself with programming skills, find unreasonable having to define the layout first to then paste a table inside. And I can understand all people angry in this thread. Probably many of them not being technical. There should be some way to e.g. move from a table into a table within an X-column layout, or have some help message in the table options to tell you how to do this

[Dave Coop]

Will Atlassian please replace the Product Manager of Confluence with a competent human being and address stupid bugs, sorry "features" like this?

[datecnl]

Agreed, this is really silly

It seems a bug. The last column boundary can be selected, the correct cursor appears, but dragging it does not do anything.

[Dave Coop]

18 months, 9506 views and still we receive ignorance from Atlassian. 

[Tomáš Petržilka]

I created another question regarding changing last column width itself

see> How to change width of last table column?

the question here has mixed description (asking about multiple tables next to each other)

[Jeffrey Ng]

agreed, this is absolutely non-sense.

[SEONed (Dan Nedelko)]

And hey this is why Notion is a thing, although the new editor is much I do have to work in on premise instances and it's painful.

[Nezam Jinnah]

There's an invisible "bar" beside the table you need to hover your mouse over. Then click + drag to re-size the width of the table. You should see, "resize table" appear if you mouse is in the right place. 

It took me a while to find it so sharing to help anyone else having the same issue. Hope that helps someone.

[Josef Micka]

So they finally added this back "somewhat", it has two big issues tho'

1) table is centered, it doesn't follow paragraph alignment and there seems to be no way to change it

2) table cannot be wider that viewport, which is bad, because it limits you what you can put there, for example you put comments or url in last column, but since you can't extend table past viewport, it will instead create tall rows to fit all text

so it's here finally, but it's not, and it's better to stick to old editor with proper table support.

[Jonathan Le]

This really got to me too, because I just wanted a small table to hold a legend.  

I ended up doing a 3 column layout page row and putting the table in there.  Works fine, though a little clunky.

[Dick de Goede]

Hi @Stuart McMullin ,
In the new interface there is no way to do this from within the table anymore, you can only adjust individual column widths.
However you can use sections to achieve this:

• Under Insert choose Layouts and add a section (choose the layout you want)
• Just add the table to the left or right section column and change the section column width.

[Gregor Heinrich]

So I need tricky workarounds (layouts or macros) to perform a basic formatting action?

Can't we just agree this direction of Confluence "experience" is not in everyone's interest? Especially compared to a fully functional "old" editor that was left by the roadside 5+ years ago and whose (basic) functionality isn't matched until this day.

Many users in my company seem to be too far away from Atlassian's priorities and design choices. When people start using different "shadow" tools instead of Confluence, alarm bells are ringing.

Sorry for being candid.

[datecnl]

Accept you can't change the last column width.

[Gil Goodridge]

Thanks for this work around... worked perfectly for me.

[Rob Randell]

I just spend a while looking for this. Then searched and found this thread. Only then did I notice I'd already liked some of these comments, because my brain just can't compute that this might be a problem. It is very much the thing that makes me think about moving to Notion or something else. We're a small company, so this won't hurt Atlassian too much, but if I move to Notion, I'd also check my choice of Jira + BitBucket

[Katerina Kovriga {Stiltsoft}]

Hi @Stuart McMullin ,

If you have the Table Filter and Charts for Confluence app installed for your instance, you may try the Table Transformer macro and its changing column width feature.

Here is an example with screenshots.

[Jason]

This is so damn stupid design and they seem to be so proud of it

[Peter Stewart]

This was driving me crazy and it is not intuitive, but Distribute Columns is the way to do it, this essentially is 'fit columns to contents'

[Josef Micka]

it doesn't solve problem with long texts and tables, that needs to be longer than your current viewport. fixed width (idealy in em) is way to go, but we can't do that in cloud version.

[Peter Stewart]

Yeah I figured it might help someone though if they just had the issue where someone had accidentally dragged the last column too wide and then couldn't get it back again, this is such a pain.

[Ollie Guan]

Hi @Stuart McMullin ,

To resize table columns, just click and drag the column's border. To make other changes to your table, click inside it to reveal the table toolbar.

Column width modes

• Responsive – choose this mode if you want the table to expand as you add content. You can drag to resize the columns. It'll also resize itself to fit the page-viewer's window size (within reason).
• Fixed width – choose this mode if you want to drag column borders to set width. Columns appear at your set size, regardless of content and window size.

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

[Josef Micka]

when will Confluence Cloud get Fixed width mode for columns? there is no such thing available in editor.

[sqning]

in https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/tables-136463.html described how to set fixed width mode as @Ollie Guan mentioned. it works for me.

[Josef Micka]

please don't confuse onprem and cloud installation of confluence.

fixed tables are supported and work in onpremise/datacenter edition, but cloud edition is missing this functionality since atlassian forced all users to new editor.

[Andy Hockey]

I try to use confluence as little as possible, and every time I do I find an obvious bug. I have had to use it today and it took less than 10 minutes to run into an issue with table widths that make my work more difficult. Confluence Cloud is truly an awful product. But it's what my company wants me to use. 

Bugs go on for years.

[Markus Ganauser]

Add another column at the end of the table, adjust the width of all the other columns and then delete the last column again. Strange workaround, but worked for me.

[David Saada]

I can add here that I have the same issue, which I managed to workaround to some extent.

However, this has become moot due to the fact that zooming into the doc and back out clobbers my column resizing to the default one used by confluence. As a result, all columns went back to their previous sizes and last columns for all tables I have grew past the frame view.

This is real lame.

[Stuart McMullin]

Hi Ollie,

Thanks for the response. I've seen that documentation. Simply put, I still don't see what you're talking about.

I don't have the options for responsive or fixed. Is there a place I can see this in action? 

[Stuart McMullin]

I must have this in "fixed" as whenever I try to move the column width it doesn't move. 

[Stuart McMullin]

This appears to be the only option close to responsive vs fixed. 

[Ollie Guan]

Hi @Stuart McMullin ,

It seems that your instance has enabled the new editor.

Convert pages to the new editor

How to revert to legacy editor

[Stuart McMullin]

@Ollie Guan Thanks for the help. It appears I have the new editor. Honestly, this shouldn't take an act of God to change the width of a table? 

I have to install a macro to change the width of a table? 

[Laura Minniear]

I am having the same issue - I am adding a table with two columns, both with very short content, and would like the width of the table as a whole to reflect that, rather than stretching across the whole page, difficult to read. I can resize columns, but not the table as a whole. This is basic table formatting functionality available in every software application I've ever used - it should be not only possible, but easy/intuitive.

Atlassian - Please let us know what is being done to address this. I am not interested in complex layouts or plug-ins to accomplish something so basic.

[Mark]

Agreed! I am having the same issue and it's quite frustrating.  A simple fixed width table shouldn't be so difficult to create! 

[Yama Wardak]

how frustrating is this, i bet a new kid will ipo something that is trivial not waste of time like this!

[José Guilherme Dias Teixeira]

It's 2022 and you can't resize a table on Atlassian without buying a plug-in. Ludicrous