I would like the ability to use macros to set table background color (more like fill), for the full height and width of the cell. bgcolor only highlights the text, not the full height and text of the table cell.

Where's the documentation on how to set even basic background cell colors? I don't see anything in the table editor that looks remotely applicable.

It is possible to set custom colors, if you're willing to edit the table cell definition in Atlassian's pseudo XHTML editor.

For example, this table:
{{<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: rgb(100,149,237);">
<p>
<strong>Has a Cornflower background</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
}}

Results in a one row, one cell table that looks like this:

Note: Color name generally does not work. You need to enter the color either in the decimal RGB form as shown, or in Hex (#rrggbb). If you enter it in hex, the Atlassian editor will convert it to the rgb decimal form.

This is undocumented behavior. Atlassian may break it in the future. This is documented to work on Confluence 5.4.4.

Fully agree with @Michael Brinson comments (from 2014!!!!!!!!)
So, Atlassian team, what about it?

Atlassian either needs to re-open this issue and add the votes from https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-27618 to this one, or else add all of the votes from this one over to https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-27618.

It's great that the ability to set background colors for cells has been added, but the description for this request is "There is no present way to set CUSTOM colours ..." Adding 5 set colors is NOT CUSTOM.

Vote up the latest issue ticket regarding this feature here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-27618

It's not possible in v5.6.1 either. There's no reason why we should not be able to set custom background colors in tables. There are options on the font colors, so why not the tables? On that topic, we should be able to set any hex color value for fonts and backgrounds via the editor. Why is this not available?

jan.mueller, it is possible, just very limited. There are five colors to choose from...
Look for the 'Highlight' button on the right side of the table toolbar. https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Working+with+Tables

I'll agree the limited color set is very annoying. but if you're developer able, you can install the source editor add-on and edit the styles yourself manually.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.editor.confluence-source-editor

            <td colspan="1" style="background-color: black;">
              <ac:image>
                <ri:attachment ri:filename="computer.png"/>
              </ac:image>
            </td>

We would really use the ability to set custom colors. The colors that are available are just too light and too limited. Since we are beyond the days of limited colors and even web-safe colors, we should be able to have a color picker.

I agree with Charles. We need the ability to set a custom color.

Although this ticket is marked as resolved, I think the main point of the feature request still exists - the ability to set a custom colour for the background of a cell/row. I'm using Confluence 5.0 and can see that there is a very limited choice offered by the drop-down button in the rich text editor, and no colour picker provided so we can choose a custom colour.

Please can we have the ability to set a custom colour.

Hallo Cheyenne
The good news is that this feature is coming in Confluence 4.3, which is currently available as a release candidate (not yet a production release). You can download and try out the release candidate on a test server. Here are the release notes:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Confluence+4.3-RC1+Release+Notes

The documentation link that you gave is for the latest release of Confluence – now Confluence 4.3 RC1.

Are you using version 4.2 of Confluence? The documentation for Confluence 4.2 is here:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF42/Working+with+Tables

I hope this helps.

Cheers, Sarah

It is startling to see that this functionality does not exist. This is a basic, fundamental feature which causes quite a bit of headache in its absence. I don't want to turn all of my tables into embedded HTML just to achieve basic functionality which is available in all other software offering table functionality. This is far less than optimal when attempting to improve adoption of the Atlassian product line.

The documentation on https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Working+with+Tables is faulty. There is no such dropdown arrow.

Highlight the current row. You can choose a colour from the dropdown arrow next to the three highlight options.
Highlight the current column. You can choose a colour from the dropdown arrow next to the three highlight options.
Highlight the current cell. You can choose a colour from the dropdown arrow next to the three highlight options.

(1) I too, judge this to be "basic functionality".
(2) To clarify, you can "flood a cell with a color", in HTML.
(2) Also, you can, "flood a cell with a color", in MediaWiki , markup. (Ever heard of www.wikipedia.org). We're trying not, to go back to MediaWiki
(3) Using the {panel:} macro is "ok", but there seems to always be a residual boarder around the panel. It is not the "fill-flood", that we hoped for ...
(4) In summary, look at other wiki-markup functionality. I propose that ... Wikis exist (? ?) as "super quick way to deliver most of HTML".
(5) Thanks for listening, Greg

bgcolor is super low in specificity it essentially behaves as though it were a browser default styling. As such, any CSS will override it.

Here is your quick and dirty workaround: Use an image (e.g.

|Column A|!1x1-green.png|border=0,width=50,height=15!|Column C|Column D|

). In the example I am using a one-pixel image scaled as desired.

A working table plug-in with

macro can be found in the following issue.

https://support.atlassian.com/browse/CSP-57492

We need a simple work-around for this issue ASAP. Matthias's macro's do not work for us in v3.4.6. Any updates on when this table formatting feature will be implemented???

Matthias, I created the user macros from your link, but I cannot get them to work with confluence 3.2. When I use your test example, it does not change the background of anything. Suggestions?

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DISC/Set+Background+Color+of+Table+Rows

https://studio.plugins.atlassian.com/wiki/display/TBL/Table-plus+macro?focusedCommentId=9961537#comment-9961537 seems an option, if a little clumsy (and way beyond most of my co-editors) to apply. I'm doin some qualitative categorisation of text in a table... edit in word is the only real option. Interestingly the 'color' section of the confluence notation guide has a very nicely color-highlighted table...

In my opinion it is somehow poor that this issue which has been created in 2006 is still not implemented

yes, if this could be added to future versions it would be great. thanks.

This really seems like basic functionality that's missing.. I've spent an inordinate amount of time today trying unsuccessfully to find a workaround for this.

Are there any plans for this feature to be implemented?

Please add this feature. I waste time whenever I create a table looking to see if this feature has been implemented and then trying to figure out how to communicate effectively without color. This was a standard feature in the wiki I used over 7 years ago! This is not of "minor" importance. Hopefully, it is a "minor" task to implement and will be done very soon.

Not being able to set the background color of a table cell or row is not a minor issue, and an easy workaround is also not there. Also relative to the 1308 report the priority is wrong, it should be high.

An easy implementation would be to add a

macro to the wiki language.

We are just rolling out our enterprise confluence wiki to the entire organization. We love the ease of use, but are surprised at the limitations on various formatting desires. For this issue in particular, we have lots of charts and they become very difficult to read without being able to use a background color feature. I hope you will get to this soon. Thank you for the consideration.

I need to use the table for different activities in different staus like "Completed", "In Progress", "Pipelined) and mark them in different color accordingly.

Without a feature of a single cell bgcolor or single row bgcolor, not sure how to do it. Imagine this issue is live for the last two years!

As per CONF-1378 we should also allow for the bgcolour of table cells.

We are looking at revamping the editor functionality in a near future release, and we could consider this feature during that time. We need to come up with better table syntax and row spanning for wiki markup.

If you're interested to know how we decide on which features to implement, please read this:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Implementation+of+New+Features+and+Improvements

Would be great feature to see. Table-plus macro helps us style table columns but not individual cells. I have had a few requests to color individual cells.

This would be a great feature to have.. information could be more meaningfully highlighted and presented.

Thi would be very useful; we use tables in Confluence for nearly everything.

Any updates on this issue? This is a nice feature to have