confluence column width hack (where have you been!?!?)

Created by Lester Martin
Jan 30, 2014
1 min read

First up, this post has a very limited audience thus I won't do my normal promotional blast to my worked-oriented LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.  This is something only those who use Confluence could appreciate.

The is there a way to resize the columns of a table on Confluence? discussion thread raises the dirty little secret that you can't.  Well, not without installing a plug-in.  But then, just before I gave up on it I saw the following instructions at the bottom courtesy of Atlassian Answers user manthony.

Total hack but it works and without a plugin.

  1. Go to the column you want set.
  2. Edit the first sentence of the heading (or one that is kind of long).
  3. Locate a space between two words "foo bar" so the space between foo and bar.
  4. Select the space.
  5. Insert < Symbol.
  6. Choose the first symbol which is invisible because it is a no-break space.
    The system pastes it in there.
  7. Repeat for the rest of the spaces in just that first sentence.

There you have it, the hacky way to do this. What this does is fools Confluence into thinking thatfirstsentenceisjustonelongstringofcharacters.

Thanks, manthony, it really works!!