Formatting of Tables in modern pages

Brass Contributor

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?

32 Replies

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.

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.

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

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.   

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

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.

You should see the option to insert a table within the text web part. Add a text web part to your page and then with your cursor in the text box, click the ellipsis (...) to see more editing options. You should see the option to insert and format your table there.

it is only limited to 10 colors and 10 shades of black. we want the ability to add a custom hex color to match our branding 

Try creating a custom theme for your site (or use one that is out of the box via Change the look). That will change the options in the table colors.

so if i use this with my brand color codes?
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric#/styles/themegenerator

this will change the options in the properties to my colors?

thanks for quick replies

Yes. Try it on a test site and use an out of the box theme so you can see what happens.

thanks will try it out.
i just changed the theme quickly and it looks like it changes teh standard color palette to match the theme so it should work if I create a custom palette with the powershell script. one last thing, any idea how to make the bold to be more bolder? ha. seems it is very light with the bold and not that noticeable.

Thanks

is there standard control/option to change table width or make it responsive to page width, please?

Not that I'm aware of.

I know this is a little off topic, but how do you add webparts inside of a table?  This was very easy to do in SP2013, but I can't figure out how to do it in O365.  

Right now, you can't add anything other than text and links in a table on a modern page. If you need to associate images with text, one thing you can do is use a one-third left or right section and add the image to the "one-third" area. Using multiple sections on pages with or without divider web parts in between allows you to create an outcome similar to a table on a modern page. Won't work in all instances, but can be helpful as a table replacement option!

@Susan Hanley 

It's a year later from your post. Has anything improved in accomplishing this?

No changes as far as I know. When I have a complex table that I can’t re-do in another way to work on a modern page, I usually create it in PowerPoint and embed the document on the page. That gives the reader an opportunity to expand it to see it larger (or download and print if appropriate).