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Doug Stalter's avatar
Doug Stalter
Brass Contributor
Oct 20, 2017

Formatting of Tables in modern pages

I recently noticed that when I add a table to a modern page (using the Text web part and paste from Word) the formatting of the columns doesn't automatically wrap the text any longer. The column widths just grow with the size of the text. This naturally creates a horizontal scroll bar in order to view the entire table contents (not very user friendly at all). I've added tables in the past and haven't observed this behavior before. In the past the text would wrap so that the entire table was visible. Was this change intentional? Is this a bug?

  • JPStoffell's avatar
    JPStoffell
    Copper Contributor
    It's 2020 and tables are still a curse to format in modern pages, anyone know if the new editing tool is on its way out??
    • Andre_LeBlanc's avatar
      Andre_LeBlanc
      Brass Contributor

      The issue I have with Tables in a modern communication page is that the table itself is always left justified within the webpart.  How do I get the entire table to be center-justified?  
      I have all my text centered down the page...and then there's the anchored to the left.  :unamused:

       

      On a related note...a few days ago in one of my tables, I managed to get a picture embedded.  And now I can't figure out how I did it! :facepalm:

       

  • We can click on the  Classic to SharePoint link on the Quick Launch and  and  our old SP on premises view  will be restored and once we navigate to site pages library and create a new sitepage and  you can have the "old" classic style of adding the tables, etc.   

    • Susan_Hanley's avatar
      Susan_Hanley
      MVP

      I'm pretty sure the rich text editor is fully rolled out know so tables are a little easier to work with now.

      • Christian Luce's avatar
        Christian Luce
        Copper Contributor

        I don't see this in my communication's site.  any idea what the name of it is or has it been rolled out yet or do we have a date of release on this? I have a business requirement for this webpart. The standard text and table web part on the modern page is limited in color and formatting options.

  • I seem to always have formatting issues when I try to paste tables on modern pages. Simple tables seem to work OK, but nothing fancy - so I try to avoid them. At Ignite, Microsoft showed an awesome preview of a really great rich text editor coming to modern pages that includes all the table formatting that we used to have in Classic.  I'm not sure when that will land, but we've been trying to find other ways to present information that might have needed a table until then. For example, in some cases we create the "table" in PowerPoint and display the single slide on the page. It is not a perfect answer, but it gives you a lot more control over the formatting of the information.

    • Doug Stalter's avatar
      Doug Stalter
      Brass Contributor

      Thanks Susan, this is what I think we'll have to do until there are better options using tables.

    • kath patterson's avatar
      kath patterson
      Iron Contributor
      pasting from the very bloated Word often transfers a lot of junk that confuses browser rendering so I am not surprised. better to go via excel which gets rid of some of the irrelevant formatting and just focuses on the table data.

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