Hi Oli, just note that there is a (paid) plugin for Confluence that does section editing: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/confluence.extra.cipe/server/overview

It has it's limitations (e.g., changes made in the sectional editing mode are not saved in Drafts), but it does provide what this ticket asks for: give you an edit window with just the section you wanted to edit.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Vlad

Is there another ticket for actual sectional editing?

Proper sectional editing would also solve many "concurrent editing" scenarios that right now are just not working. Of course the "keep in place" feature does not help in these scenarios at all.

Huh. So your solution for sectional editing is not actually sectional editing.

With this solution, a user is still confronted with a huge wall of text rather than just the section you want to change. It's a little better now than the original back-to-top approach, but sectional editing is also about focusing on the one section you want to edit. When you hit 'e', it does not just leave the page exactly where it was, causing you to have to do some searching for the typo anyway. And out of testing a few pages, it has a ~50% success rate, meaning I found pages in my wiki where it does not leave you at the place you were at when you hit 'e', even if you have the section you want to edit in the middle of the page, meaning the page shifts enough that your area of focus will be off-screen when it opens for editing. The real success rate over many tries might be better than 50%, but I noticed on several pages of my wiki that if the line you want to edit is at the top of the page, the chance it is still on the page after pressing 'e' is much lower than 100%. It also puts your cursor at some random location on the page, often far out of view, and if you hit another key at that point, it will insert there, such as in the middle of a table way off-screen. It will pop to that point when it happens, at least, but in a wall of text where the cursor is already on screen, you might not realize you inserted text at that point.

@mansour, Sherif, and Everyone.

Gist: Nice work, Atlassian!

As the original reporter of this issue way back in Confluence 2.1.5, and the one who consolidated a bunch of related requests into one topic, I would like to add my two cents, hopefully to preempt a run of comments about how this is neither sectional editing nor inline editing as described in the comments, linked issues, the issue description, nor as experienced in comparable tools.

I think that the confluence experience has evolved considerably since this story / change request was proposed. The interactivity of the editor has evolved, the tools for laying out content have evolved, and the syntax used to encode the pages has evolved, the ability to merge edits from multiple people on different parts of the page has evolved, all leading to a much more reliable and robust editing experience.

Despite that evolution, the need to edit long-form content was still not fully addressed. Until now.

I look forward to trying this new feature in action. Based on the description and my experience with Confluence 5.8, I am confident, as Sherif has stated above, that this is an elegant and appropriate solution for the core issues that are being called out above. It suspect it will greatly improve the ability to work with long-form content. That was the essence of the request, and I believe the combination of features that Confluence has brought to bear over the past 9 years and with this final change do indeed address the spirit of the original request.

I propose that we should all accept this resolution path. There is likely to be some aspects of this that are still less than satisfying for some. I propose given the time that has passed, and the dramatic changes to the overall experience between versions 2.1.5 and 5.9, that those concerns, if any, should be raised as new items.

This ticket and it's nine year history, and the fact that it was closed as FIXED, not thrown away during some housekeeping exercises over the years, renews my confidence in Atlassian and my faith that 'putting an idea out there' may sometimes eventually lead to a positive outcome.

Thanks Atlassian, and everyone that contributed comments, votes and ideas on how to address this need.

Hi Everyone,
We're very thankful for your feedback and patience with this feature suggestion.

We're pleased to announce that in the upcoming Server release of Confluence 5.9 (due within the next few days) and our most recent Confluence Cloud release this feature is now resolved.

Whilst this isn't exactly "Section Editing" as per the traditional sense we strongly believe this solves the same problem. Confluence will now keep you in the same spot when you move between viewing and editing a page (sometimes referred to as 'in-place' editing). Also, to make sure the tools you need are always at your fingertips, the page data (breadcrumbs, restrictions, and attachments) and tools now appear as soon as you start to scroll up, meaning no scrolling all the way to the top of the page.

If you're scrolling down a page simply hit e or scroll up slightly and press edit to edit in-place. Upon saving you'll remain in the same location as you were editing.

We hope this makes collaborating on your long-form content just that little bit easier.

Cheers,
The Confluence Team.

I can't imagine it's a simple or easy change. Knowing Atlassian, they'll try several iterations until they find the right fit. This means they're confident they'll achieve it I think.

I heard that and had the same reaction! Just gotta wait for "Early next year" - they're a bit cagey about what that means.

Would have been nice to see this item being picked up so that we got feedback that this was happening, but I'll take it.

Just announced at Atlassian Summit 2015, "in-place editing"! Coming out in Confluence early next year. Now where ever you are on a page, and you click edit... It will take you to that section of the page you were viewing! I wanted to yell out "about damn time!"

IMO section edit capability is a basic wiki feature that Confluence should have.