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Used with the Section macro to define columns on a page. See  Working with page layouts and columns and sections.

Code examples


Macro name: column

Macro body: Accepts rich text.

Parameter nameRequiredDefaultParameter description and accepted values


No100% 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%).

Storage format example

Wiki markup example


  1. 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. Hi Nguyen,

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

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

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


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

    1. 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 Thanks.


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


      1. Hi Tracy,

        It would be appreciated if you can raise a support ticket via for further investigation. Thanks.


      2. 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. Anonymous

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

        2. 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. Hi there,

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


  3. Anonymous

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

    1. 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.


  4. 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. 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.


  5. 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.


    I'm like to use the

    1. Anonymous

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

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

  6. 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?



    1. 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. 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.


  7. 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?

  8. Anonymous

    How do you merge rows/columns?

    I have this on my wiki markup

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


  9. 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. 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:

    something goes here
    something else goes here

    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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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|]

    2. Anonymous

      Thanks JB, Just what I was looking for.

      • Rick
  11. 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)

     Expand source

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

  12. 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.


    Andrew Drury

  13. 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?

  14. Anonymous

    What I find hard to believe is that the writers have removed the detailed parameter information for macros - or at least have omitted to give examples of the markup. For example, how hard would it have been to go the extra mile and give \{column:width=50%} as an example? That's for those of us who use macros only occasionally and who can't remember when to use a colon and when to use a |, or whether the 50% should be in quotes! Grrrrr. C'mon, you tech writers, you're assuming too much!


    1. Hi there

      I think I may have answered this comment here: Re: Working with Macros

      Cheers, Sarah

  15. I am having issues with column width when some of the content extends horizontally beyond the edge of the screen, forcing a horizontal scrollbar.  In this case, I have a smaller column to the left with a panel containing overall information about the page.  I would like this column to be 300px.  In the right column, I have some large images and such that require scrolling to view fully.  However, regardless of whether I set the left column to 300px or 30% or even 50%, it gets smushed down to a much smaller size.

    1. Hi Patrick, just confirming, you are wanting the column containing the image to preserve the width of the image, and scroll, rather than resize the image to the width of the column? 

      As far as I am aware Confluence will resize the image so that it fits the column, and users can then click the image to view a full size version.   

      1. Hi Rachel,

        Thanks for the reply.  That's not quite right.  The larger column with the wide image is working properly... stretching to the width of the image specified.  Unfortunately, it is also squishing the smaller column to the left (containing a simple text panel).  This column is set to 300px.  However, it looks like it's getting squished down to 150px or so.  

        Now, on a larger monitor... something with enough horizontal pixels to show the entire large image to the right... the smaller (left) column extends the full 300px.  But on a smaller monitor (or if, say, the browser window is not maximized, but reduced in size), again, the intended-300px column width is reduced.