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The Column macro allows you to define a single column in a page.

Columns must be defined within a 'section' of a page. So, to display columns correctly in a page, the Column macro placeholders must be inserted within a Section macro placeholder.

Once you have defined the columns inside a Section macro, you can add content to each of the Column macro placeholders.

On this page:

The following screenshot shows two columns defined within a section of a page:

When you see the page in view mode, the above layout is displayed like this:

The content of column one is entered within the placeholder of the first Column macro placeholder here.

The content of column two is entered within the placeholder of the second Column macro placeholder here.

Using the Column Macro

To add the Column macro to a page:

  1. In the Confluence editor, choose Insert > Other Macros.
  2. Find and select the required macro.

Note: Column macros must be inserted within a Section macro for columns to be displayed correctly on a page.

Parameters

When editing, you can click on the macro placeholder and choose Edit to display the parameters for this macro in the Macro Browser.

Parameters are options that you can set for Confluence macros to control the content or format of the macro output. The table below lists parameters for this macro that can be set in the Macro Browser.

Parameter

Default

Description

Column Width

100% of the page width, divided equally by the number of columns in the section.

The width of the column. Can be specified either in pixels (for example, 400px) or as a percentage of the available page width (for example, 50%).

Related Topics

Section Macro
Working with Macros
Working with Tables

Take me back to the Confluence User's Guide.

35 Comments

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  1. Mar 13, 2008

    Vinh-Thach Nguyen

    A long text is not wrapped according to the column width. The width of the column is then fixed by the length of the text!

    1. Apr 08, 2008

      Ming Giet Chong

      Hi Nguyen,

      I have done a test in normal a html with the following code:

      <table border = "1">
<tr>
<td width="30%">longlongtextwithoutspace</td>
<td width="70%">Testing</td>
</tr>
</table>

      As a result, this is an expected behavior which the text is wrapped according to the length of the text.

      Regards,
      MG

  2. Sep 11, 2008

    Tomi Strugar

    I've tested in Conf 2.7.3 and it seems the width parameter is ignored (both % and px).

    1. Sep 16, 2008

      Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian]

      Hi Tomi,

      I have tried on my local 2.7.3 instance, but the width parameter works as advertised. Please ensure that the {section} and {column} macros are not encapsulated within other macros, which might circumscribe the parameter values. You might also want to try other browsers, too. If that does not help, I would suggest you to raise a support request at http://support.atlassian.com. Thanks.

      Cheers,
      Azwandi

    2. Oct 23, 2008

      Tracy Adams

      Were you able to figure this out?  I'm having the same issue on 2.8.2.  Worked fine in 2.2.9. 

      Thanks

      1. Oct 31, 2008

        Ming Giet Chong

        Hi Tracy,

        It would be appreciated if you can raise a support ticket via https://support.atlassian.com for further investigation. Thanks.

        Regards,
        MG

      2. Nov 02, 2008

        Tomi Strugar

        Hi Tracy and Azwandi

        What I found is that in order for % and px column widths to work you need to have a blank column at the end.

        ie. use this

        instead of this

        You can vote/watch this issue at support ticket 13587. Cheers, Tomi

        1. Apr 01, 2009

          Anonymous

          Unfortunately, this workaround does not work when you are using the section:border=false value.

        2. Jul 21, 2009

          Anonymous

          In fact, it doesn't work at all regardless. 2.9.2 all was well, now all our columns fail in v3.0.0_01

          1. Jul 28, 2009

            Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian]

            Hi there,

            I have further tested this without a border for the section macro, but it still works. Here is my wiki markup:

            Cheers,
            Azwan

  3. Sep 24, 2008

    Anonymous

    If I have a section and columns is there anyway I can change the color of the background of the columns?

    1. Sep 25, 2008

      Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian]

      Hi there,

      The {column} and {section} macros do not have the attributes where you can define the background colour. However, you can use a panel macro inside them to get a coloured box. Hope that helps.

      Cheers,
      Azwandi

  4. Feb 20, 2009

    Anonymous

    If I have a section with columns, and I go between Rich Text and Wiki Markup, a space is automatically introduced between the section and column tags.  We're using 2.10.1.

    I looked to see if this was in as a ticket, but didn't find it.  I assume it must be there, because it's so obvious...

    Other people are having this bug happen, right?

    1. Feb 22, 2009

      Mark Hrynczak [Atlassian]

      Hi,

      You're correct that this is a known issue: CONF-14058

      Add yourself as a watcher on that issue to be notified on updates.

      Cheers,
      Mark

  5. Oct 14, 2009

    Anonymous

    Hello Community,

    I'm using v3.0 and the

    + macros on a page to display text on the left and the corresponding images on the right (classic 2-column layout).

    All this works fine BUT, I need to export to PDF (from the Advanced menu) and when I do so, Confluence PDF engine simply ignores the macros and the 2-column layout. It just displays the text first and then the images, below, not on the right.

    Is it:

    a/ a bug ?

    b/ something I can handle with CSS ?

    A million thanks in advance.

    K.

    I'm like to use the

    1. Oct 14, 2009

      Anonymous

      Sorry I meant the section and column macros.... too bad I can't add the brackets.... :-(

      1. Oct 26, 2009

        Ramon

        We experience the same behaviour. Using wiki pages with sections and columns are not displayed accordingly on the PDF export.

  6. Oct 26, 2009

    Anonymous

    Hi there,

    I'm trying to have nested columns, that is I have a section (100% width) with a column (70%) and a column (30%). Now I want another two columns beneath the 70% column (35/35%) and the 30% column to span both (the 70% and the two 35% columns).

    Does anyone have a clue for the wiki Markup of this layout?

    Thanks!

    Lukele

    1. Oct 26, 2009

      Yoni Barkan

      You could try to put a table in the 70% column, but I don't really like that approach. I am very interested in the response to this question - I have been looking for the answer to that for awhile and I don't think it is doable. I have tried to embed sections within sections and of course that doesn't work....

      1. Nov 04, 2009

        Jack Low [Atlassian]

        Hi Lukele & Yoni,
        The advance table formatting function is not available in Confluence's wiki markup yet. Atlassian has an existing feature request on this:

        Please feel free to cast your vote, share your comment over there, and add yourself as a watcher for future update. Please also take note on how we implement new features and improvements.

        Cheers,

  7. Sep 23, 2010

    Andreas Camenzind

    When using sections and columns in a page, the exported PDF is not showing them accordingly (as in the printed version).

    Is there a way to optimize the CSS or other things, so that the PDF export is working properly?

    1. Sep 23, 2010

      Anonymous

      Take a look to http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-14758

  8. Sep 30, 2010

    Anonymous

    How do you merge rows/columns?

    I have this on my wiki markup

    || Username || Password ||
    | admin | admin |

    Thanks

  9. Apr 27, 2011

    Anonymous

    Using "

    ", it seems that the border rendering is broken in 3.5.x, while working in 3.4.9, even here on the current page, the example doesn show the border.
    (Hoping a fix will be released soon)

  10. May 17, 2011

    J.B. Nicholson-Owens

    Earlier I believed that tables in columns did not work. Now I see that they do, it's a particular macro that fails.

    If you introduce a {table} macro in either column the wiki behaves as if there are no columns at all. The following wiki markup fails:

    {section}
    {column:width=50%}
    {table}
    ||foo||bar||
    |one|two|
    {table}
    something goes here
    {column}
    {column:width=50%}
    {table}
    ||foo||bar||
    |one|two|
    {table}
    something else goes here
    {column}
    {section}

    But {table-plus} works (simply substitute {table-plus} for {table}) or one can use the built-in tables by removing the {table} markup entirely.

    1. May 16, 2011

      Klaus Feldmann

      i just tested your code on my instance and it works fine on conf. 3.5.3. 

      Check your table macro in use. You might run into trouble by having two table macros active which! I remember something that could go wrong if you have Andy Brooks table Macro installed on top of the content formatting macro while missing to disable one of them.

      1. May 17, 2011

        J.B. Nicholson-Owens

        Thanks for trying this; it's a shame that the v3.5.4 running here on Atlassian's own install of Confluence does not show this to be working. As you can see the tables are not side-by-side, they are one above the other which is incorrect.

        I have no idea what macros are installed here so I can't say what I'm using when I use {table} on this wiki.

        1. May 16, 2011

          Mark Hrynczak [Atlassian]

          The {table} macro is provided by the Adaptavist Content Formatting Macros plugin.

          If you need to use this macro, then you should raise a ticket with Adaptavist about it.

          If you don't need to use the macro, then you can just remove it, and your tables will display side-by-side as expected. I've added an example of this to your test page.

          1. May 17, 2011

            J.B. Nicholson-Owens

            Thanks for your input. I see now that {table-plus} works as well as tables that don't use the macro. I'll correct my earliest post in this thread.

        2. May 17, 2011

          Klaus Feldmann

          column macro works only in view mode and not on printout!

          I do use table macro not from content formatting macros and if you have more than on table macro installed would cause trouble - check this out.

          To get your code to work on view and print you need to add a show-if:actions=view, edit|display=printable and the a working table macro installation.

          Introducing new PDF stylesheets by atlassian break functionality of column macro and they maybe missed to update their content formatting macros.

           Now I use

          The column and section macro is just used to separate the float macro from other content and to get something like a div.

          I dont know why you use table macro without any parameters in addition because it is just needed if you want to apply css.

          Check out [float-macro|https://www.adaptavist.com/display/AtlassianConfluence/float+macro]

  11. May 24, 2011

    John Molloy

    I've written a user macro for our users to write up simple feature requests. The user adds the macro to a page and fills in the name of the new feature and the desired functionality. They also select the feature it is based on, the macro then links to the page for that feature and includes the excerpt from the base feature's own page.

    The macro worked fine when its layout was based on tables up until the point where a user needed to add a list in the FEATURESPECIFICS field. That broke the table into 2, and put the list in between the 2 sections.

    So I'm attempting to change to {section} & {column} (see below)

    The result I'm getting is decidedly odd. The first 2 sections display as hoped. The row title on the left in a 10% width column and the content in the 90% width column beside it.

    However the last 2 section display incorrectly. The title columns appear below the content column. And the content columns have { added to the end of the user entered text.

    Is there something wrong with my macro or is this a bug?

    1. May 25, 2011

      John Molloy

      Adding {panel} around the 2 text fields has fixed the alignment issue. But I'm still getting a { added to the end of the displayed text in each of those fields. Anyone any ideas where that is coming from?

      1. Oct 12, 2011

        Jacob Courter

        Yes, you did not close your "panel" reference with a } on the second line from the bottom

  12. Nov 02, 2011

    Andrew Drury

    Hi,

     

    I'm usijg Confluence 4 and trying to insert an existing Gliffy-in-Confluen ce diagram into a column, to no avail. It inserts the Gliffy, but at the top of the page, above the first 'Section' placeholder.  Cutting and copying to the target location in the column placeholder has no effect - i.e. the Gliffy is successfully cut, but pasting doesn't work - nothing happens.

    Any suggestions on how to insert the Gliffy into the column? It worked in Confluence 3.5.11 when we could use wikimarkup.

    Thanks,

    Andrew Drury

  13. Dec 15, 2011

    Anonymous

    Using confluence 4.0.5.  I am trying to remove content out of a column. But I am not having any luck.  I try and cut and paste the content outside of the column section, but then it just pastes the content inside of a column wrapper.  If I try and remove the column, it removes all the content along with it.  

    With wiki markup, this would be easy to solve.  How do I do it in the new editor?