How do I add horizontal scrolling to a table or page?

[Mark Singer]

I have a 13 - 15 column table on a page that needs all columns to be readable.  However when I widen some columns, other columns become narrower.  Additionally, it looks like there is a limit to the width of a page, given that there is a wide amount of whitespace on the left & right sides of the page.

Is there a way to enable the table and/or page to go past the right-side edge?  Like a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the table that would allow me to fix the widths of individual columns and scroll the table horizontally as needed in order to view/edit the other columns not visible?

I should add that I am relatively new to Confluence and only have user (not admin) rights.

[Diego]

Hello @Mark Singer !

As I understand, the table you created does not have a scrolling bar that allows you to create wider tables and still have the content displayed as needed.

When I create a table and keep adding columns, their width does indeed reduce. However, when I resize them manually, their size goes beyond the default width set for the page. The only issue I faced was when resizing the last column.

For me to be able to resize the last column I needed to resize the previous column way more than what was needed. After that, I released the column and then reduced the column back to the needed size.

Here is what it looks like in edit mode and view mode:

Narrow Width - Edit

Narrow Width - View

Full Width - Edit

Full Width - View

For you to resize columns you need to click the vertical line that divides each columns and then drag it.

Let me know if this helps you out!

[Deleted user]

Thanks @Diego it worked only in Chrome but not in MS Edge.

[sambitbastia]

Hi Srinivas, i was searching for this information and yes your comment helped. But once again if i get into edit mode this resets (columns are fitted in page width). Is there a way to handle this?

[John Johnson]

Yes, everything in this cloud is sort of a horrific work-around. That said I also came here hoping there was a magical way to get wide confluence tables to behave in the new editor. After much disappointment I started playing with "Diego"s solution above.

I was likewise frustrated that none of the column settings properly persist when you go to edit the page again... and that remains true and I hope it is fixed soon.

That said, a workaround I have discovered is that you can easily highlight the ENTIRE header row... and then in one step set all of the columns to a readable width by adjusting the first column... and then save the page.

Of course...get used to doing this every time you edit the page, but if you do it this way it is easier then trying to adjust tens of columns only to be disappointed later.

I did this in Chrome.

[John Johnson]

Also, you should make the column width LARGER than you think you need because it reduces slightly after saving.

[MSimpson]

Would really appreciate this being fixed.  We have a number of larger tables, which are borderline unusable because Confluence fits the table to the page horizontally, instead of providing a scroll bar

[Peter Anderson]

Thank you! This worked great for me in Google Chrome.

[Michael Losa]

Can this get fixed for Firefox and Edge?

[Pete Mill]

Can this get fixed for something, anything?

This pretended to work for me while I edited the table in Chrome.  I had scroll bars and wide columns and it was almost doing what I wanted it to do. 

Unfortunately when I published the page it resized everything and lost the scroll bars and the column width settings which I had painstakingly configured.

So, while of course it might be that I just haven't quite figured out the intricacies of the interface, I would like wide tables with horizontal scroll bars please!

If we can't get Confluence to work we'll be made to do it in Teams - which I'd rather not do.

[aleksandarkojic]

Thanks John Johnson this trick worked for us! Hope Atlassian Team will resolve this soon as it's really anoying.

[John Johnson]

Glad to help... there is no truer use for the phrase "we are all in this together"... than for The Cloud (tm).

[Jana_Kyselova]

Diego, unfortunately the horizontal scrollbar is just on the bottom of the table. So in case the table has many rows and columns, I have to scroll down to see the horizontal scrollbar, and next scroll-up to desired row - and hoping I catch correct row. That's terrible! We need the horizontal scroll-bar not at the bottom of the table, but on the screen all the time we are working with the table. 

[Randy Beard]

An individual fix is to create a bookmarklet. Whats infuriating is they could just add display contents to the confluence tables and this would look perfect.

javascript:[...document.querySelectorAll("table")].forEach(node => node.style.display = 'contents');

[Saransh Bansal]

Tables are absolutely horrendous in the cloud version more than anything else. They are unusable after 5 columns. The editing options are designed in the most non-user friendly way possible.

I was trying to create a "card" or "form" element and use a combination of Tabs and forms to completely replace large tables. Sadly, I can't find any good plugins at the moment and have to rely on tables with single row and vertical columns in each tab.

[Kashif Khan]

This.. we just moved from self-hosted instance to cloud and our tables are broken where i upgraded to the "new" format.

The older format pages also dont do dynamic tables(sort entries in column) which leaves me in a tricky position as either way it becomes very unusable for our usecase which involves evaluating data(i generate and push the data to confluence via rest so atleast i send technical analysis via email etc).

Still the case to view it on confluence in a "nice" readable manner is now gone :( I wonder if the old table column width tags will be respected if i set it in the page content i push. I have the code for it but didnt need to do it with the older self hosted instance.

[Kashif Khan]

Larger width tables eta Q4 2023 according to their Jira..

Set custom widths in tables