Best way to add tables to an Atlassian Community Article
Asked by Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California):

I noticed that the editor available for Articles in community.atlassian.com has specific and limited editor functions. What is the best way to add tables to an article? What should be the recommended width of the images pasted? (I tried 520px wide)


Answers:
author: _Fabian A. Lopez
body: [@Max Cascone](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1149014) @The Community environment is based on Lithium

comments: author: Max Cascone
body: Hi, thanks for the reply, I don't know what that means, can you elaborate? (also thanks for being active in your own almost-two-year-old thread!)


author: Shannon S
body: Max,

I can elaborate. Lithium is another product, not created by Atlassian. For more details:

<https://www.lithium.com/products/online-communities/forums>

Regards,

Shannon


author: _Fabian A. Lopez
body: [@Shannon S](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/510046) I checked on the page you mentioned but the images are broken...

![image.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/59121iD5C0B42F8D7084F2/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "image.png")

comments: author: Shannon S
body: Fabian,

Thank you for sharing that. When I first sent this article in January 2018 the images were not broken, so it's possible they've been removed in the 1.5 years since then.

[@Bridget](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1157270) any idea on what happened to the images [in your article](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Agile-articles/Community-Spotlight-Marcos-Garcia/ba-p/692097)?


author: Shannon S
body: Hi Fabian,

The Community editor supports HTML, so I would recommend using HTML to insert tables. If you aren't already familiar with this, have a look at this article: [HTML Tables](https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp).

I recommend not posting an image wider than the article content width. The width of the images [on this article](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Agile-articles/Community-Spotlight-Marcos-Garcia/ba-p/692097) is 539px.

I hope that helps but do let us know if you have any further questions!

Regards,

Shannon

comments: author: Max Cascone
body: hi, i'm copying a table from Confluence into a Community article. The markup tables aren't translating well, so I'm going to have to rebuild them in html. It doesn't seem to work. A simple table like this just shows up as the entered text, no formatting is applied. I also tried adding an \<html\>..\</html\> wrapper with no effect.

| Performance Traits | 1.0 |
|--------------------|-----|


author: Shannon S
body: Hi Max,

I suspect you might be entering it in the text box, but you don't have an option to use HTML until you go in and edit an existing comment.

I just did that with your comment above, removing the example HTML code and clicking the HTML tab. If you click the ... next to your reply and edit, you'll see what I did.

Can you tell me now if it looks the way you expect?

Regards,

Shannon


author: Max Cascone
body: Hi [@Shannon S](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/510046) , thanks for the help. It should look like a table, although since I didn't put any border in there specifically i suppose it looks right. I would expect a border by default, though it's been a while since i hand-coded HTML tables.

But my initial post, which was in a comment, wasn't about tables in comments, it's about tables in Community articles. The editor seems extremely limited. Why isn't it just the existing Confluence editor? Why go and build a third editor experience? (Confluence and Jira being the other two.)

When i paste the table from confluence, it does appear partially, although the header is extracted as plain text. The regular rows appear to be mostly correct. But the editor itself throws an error when saving, that the HTML is invalid, and i can't save it without removing the table altogether.

FWIW the table I'm copying over from Confluence is built with Confluence Markup and the pipe-style tables (which i like).

thanks

max


author: Shannon S
body: Max,

When I tested this in a text file and viewed in Chrome, there was also no border, so I think the display is correct.

The Community uses Lithium, which is a 3rd party software and thus the reason that it does not use the regular Confluence editor.

I'll send your feedback over to the marketing team behind our Community. The information will help us to improve this in the future.

Regards,

Shannon


author: Max Cascone
body: Thanks! In the meantime, is there a way to create tables - HTML, markup, anything - in Community articles?


author: Shannon S
body: Hi Max,

Yes, when writing an article, you can use HTML to build your article:

![Screenshot 2019-07-04 at 13.26.23.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/59626i58D4CE17DB8E5B43/image-dimensions/259x172?v=v2 "Screenshot 2019-07-04 at 13.26.23.png")![Screenshot 2019-07-04 at 13.26.27.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/59627i2738AA8520390F91/image-dimensions/259x173?v=v2 "Screenshot 2019-07-04 at 13.26.27.png")

Let me know if you have any trouble. You may need to specify your borders in your HTML if you intend to use them.

Regards,

Shannon


author: Max Cascone
body: I am likely doing something wrong, but I don't have those options when i create or edit an article.

Is there something i need to enable somewhere?


author: Shannon S
body: Max,

Can you show us a screenshot of what you're seeing? I tested for Article, Question, and Discussion, and they all appear to have an HTML tab for me. I'd like to see how the view looks for you.

Regards,

Shannon


author: Max Cascone
body: Hi - this what i get when creating a new article:

![image.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/60234iA924DF444E9B605E/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "image.png")


author: Shannon S
body: Thank you, Max.

I believe it might be permissions related. My guess would be that since we've had some reports of issues when pasting code with Community it may have been disabled.   

Do you also not have the ability to add HTML to posts or when editing posts you've already made?

Regards,

Shannon


author: Shannon S
body: Hi Max,

I looked into this, and it seems originally that HTML was restricted only to article writing, but there's an issue right now with security so it's been disabled.

I have noticed at times if I copy and paste a table from elsewhere into here, the table remains. Are you able to do the same?

Regards,

Shannon


author: Max Cascone
body: If i remember correctly, I copy-pasted a table from Confluence into here, and the table came across but the header row was stripped into plain text. I was not able to edit or change the table structure.


author: Shannon S
body: Max,

Thank you for confirming that. In that case, the best workaround would be to include an image of the table in your article, since HTML is unavailable at this time.

Let me know if you have any trouble.

Regards,

Shannon


Tags: community

confluence

feedback

html

markup

table