One of the best things about documenting in Confluence is being able to use sections for content.  It leaves one free to draft documentation and then worry about perfecting it later (1 column / 2 column / move up / move down, etc).  Without the single column section functionality of before, it is impossible to move the single column sections and yes.....we end up having to copy / paste everything.  It's even worse trying to revert from having a panel in a 2 column layout and moving that to a single column layout.  PLEASE bring back this important functionality.  Also, how about better "drag and drop" editing?  That would be helpful too.

I third him.

I second Brad Developer. 

I wish someone at Atlassian would show some leadership on the new editor issues. 

It is bad enough that there are so many core features that were removed and still missing, but to have an issue like this called a "suggestion" and still under consideration is an insult to long time users and supporters.

I hate it when companies that you believe in f*ck things up like this.

Coming up an a year and it's still only "under consideration. 

Surely this is a top priority fix now? I've noticed a whole slew of useless new features being added and not this one that most users are crying out for. You need to listen to your users and stop procrastinating. 

Seriously?  Is there a reason it's still just under consideration?  Or a reason this functionality was removed in the first place?

This needs to be "in progress" immediately. I have countless documents that works infinitely better with the single column layout and will need to distribute to a team of over 50.

Dear Team Atlassian, 

This issue has been open since 26 Aug 2019 and the linked tickets were opened on 7 March 2019, 19 and 29 July 2019 respectively.

Based on the number of comments on this ticket alone has gathered over the course of 10 months I think it is clear that this update is in high demand. 
What I fail to understand is why there is no response from your team. The ticket went to "under consideration" on 1 Oct 2019 and that was over 8 months ago. 

Can you please give us an insight into how things work at Atlassian and how long do we as users need to wait to firstly get a response from you and secondly for the feature to come back to your product. 

I agree with all the comments above.

What's extra hilarious and sad is that this issue is listed as a SUGGESTION and is UNDER_CONSIDERATION. What really?!?!?

Just admit that you are not finished updating the editor and get it on the roadmap already.  Jeez.

I have always been a cheerleader for your products and this makes it hard to be that.

What bugs me is that Atlassian positions it self as a "Though Leader" in our industry. 

Your letting us down so just fix it already...

hey @aaustin - I believe I'm a space admin, but I might be a site admin. glad you found it useful, and sorry I can't be more helpful.

Good luck to us all!

@beth.wright
I was so excited to see you post, about how to get to the legacy editor, 
But I searched the Space Settings > Content Tools and 

found no "legacy Editor Blueprint"

Is this Admin-Instance or Admin-Space?
(I'll check the instance as well, but was hoping to kick on the legacy editor in a single space)

And quite a bummer that it doesn't make templates!

@Charles Riberio, I hope @beth.wright's comment helped you.  I'm not a space admin so I'm not sure how the availability of the selections is managed.  Hopefully you can find it!  Silly someone somewhere would decide the useful tool would have to go away!

The legacy editor is available as a Blueprint, which can be added to your options when creating a new page by a space admin. 

Go to Space Settings > Content Tools and find the "Legacy Editor Blueprint". Click Promote, and it'll be added as one of the options when users create a new page.

We cannot, however, create any new templates using the old editor, which is a complete drag.

@don Campbell … I saw you mentioned when creating a new page you can revert back to legacy editor by selecting 'show more'? I tried looking around for that and didn't see the option. The only thing I see when I'm creating a new page is the template option (now on the right side of the page) and my normal tool bar options. In my toolbar I selected the '+' and 'view more' but didn't find anything on the legacy editor. Is there somewhere else I'm missing, would love the option to choose the old editor. Let me know...thanks

@beth.wright - we are leaving all our pages in the old editor and might manually convert if it becomes a step forwards. Right now the old editor is broken, the new editor does not work how we like it, and 'Discuss our future with Atlassian products' will go on our next IT Team meeting agenda - primarily because Atlassian's prevarication about these editors does not give us confidence in the stability of these tools. In one statement they said they would leave the 'old' editor alone, yet now it has been broken - some time in the past week or so I guess.

I cannot base my teams' work on unstable tools.

@beth.wright... On my page a (somewhat annoying) animated check shows up in the lower-left corner of a document when I'm editing, indicating the page can be converted to the new editor and giving an opportunity to preview the conversion before accepting it. If that option is available you can get a peek at what it would look like that way.

For me, since the new editor doesn't support anchors or sections (i.e., full-page sections that can be re-arranged) the new editor is already a non-starter but I decided to see how the page rendered anyway.  It rendered very poorly; lots of extra added white space and fonts overly-large. 

As previous commentators have said, the new editor takes away much and adds nothing useful, so there's really no reason to even consider using/converting pages to it.  Always create pages with the legacy editor (you may have to select "Show more" when you create a page for the legacy editor to show up). 

@beth.wright...I would stay far away from the new editior… It's almost like they totally disregarded the user experience when making these changes. I personally am considering other tools at this point I'm so frustrated.

Did you manually convert to the new editor? or was it automatic for your company? I'm afraid to touch any of my old pages at this point, but Atlassian says you can use page history to revert to a previous editor type.

So - now I discover that pages with the functioning section editor are completely destroyed if they are edited. The list of bugs is almost too enormous to repeat here but the most severe is that on publishing the page all sections that have been edited are mangled completely. Pressing 'return' in a section changes the section layout. AAAGH- what are you doing, Atlassian???

This is a must for Confluence.   I rarely use a must, but I have customers with single section mixed with multiple sections frequently, and they need to upgrade.

Charry. The answer to why they do it to us is here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftenor.com%2Fview%2Fdave-chapelle-chapelle-show-popcopy-fuck-em-thats-why-gif-11866262&psig=AOvVaw2I0KWdYc0wLwqyAexeMTa9&ust=1587661905761000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCOii8dnD_OgCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAJ

Having first wasted a good deal of time trying to find out how to perform the (previously) simple operation of restructuring a page with the new editor, I then was left speechless that this is described as 'progress'. It never occurred to me that Atlassian would intentionally remove this feature. I mean why would they?? In my experience users start off with the 'wall of text' page structure, then graduate to sections precisely because they make restructuring easy.

Fortunately copying an existing page has always brought with it the functioning section editor, and it is reassuring to see Atlassian dancing around the admission that in this case 'new editor' does not mean 'better editor'.

Seriously, why remove an actual useful feature and call this progress?

Hi all,

As we're working through this feature and others, we wanted to address a lot of your concerns as to the future of the new editor and legacy editor.

Please read our recent community post here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-Cloud-articles/Change-to-your-content-is-in-your-hands/ba-p/1324476

Thanks,

Avinoam

Agree with all the above comments. This is a necessary feature to creating aesthetic & READABLE confluence pages. Should be addressed asap. Else Google Docs will get my business.

UNDER CONSIDERATION???? What is above this in the priority list? "Add stuff no one cares about" like more emojis? I have yet to meet a single user who doest think these are the top issue to resolve

Moving sections up/down is a must-have before I can switch to it from the old editor. Beggars belief that it hasn't been included in the MVP for the new editor.

Add another vote to needing to move sections up/down.  I'm not going to bother adding any further information to confluence until this is resolved.  I've made only a couple of adds/edits as a new user, and this is a show stopper.  I'll deal with word files on a local server before wasting my time with this.   It's clear that the implementation team of this new editor actually doesn't have any responsibility to create/maintain content in confluence!

Yes there need to be a single column choice. Makes no sense why there is not.

Can we get the single column layout added back in? We use it very extensively at my company and it helps to organize and create better looking confluence pages. 

@cruel: It may be different for various instances, so no guarantees here, but for our instance this is the guidance I gave to my team:
If the page was created with the old editor it still uses it. But if you want to Create a new page, you need to select Blank page (old) (going away soon) when you Create the page (if you don't see it, select show more at the bottom of the Create view).

I have also read comments where people copy and move a page created by the "legacy" editor, then deleting the contents of page.

However, if you've started creating a page with the new editor, I haven't found a way to open that page with the legacy editor (and I doubt there's a path for that anyway).

Good luck!

Anyone know how to roll back to the previous editor?

We had an iphone, and they gave us a Blackberry....

The new editor is the New Coke of documentation. Original was better and we all know it. At least bring back the option to choose between the two.

I'm SUPER glad we now have hundreds of emojis but can't move layouts up and down the page. (n)I'm considering buying shares in Atlassian just so I can go to the annual Shareholders meeting and raise this issue to the CEO. Anyone else want to join me??

I just started using the new editor as well and I agree with the rest. Sections are a powerful, useful feature I have depended on to easily organize and re-organize complex documentation.  I'm baffled as well as to why an existing feature like this would be removed.  Please bring it back ASAP, and do not remove the legacy editor until Sections (and Anchors) are returned in the new editor.

Thank you

On second though, the solution is very simple: Just keep the legacy editor available and you won't need need to do any addition development work!  Problem solved, customers happy (and retained). 

I just started using the new editor and agree with the general sentiment. Sections are a significantly useful feature that makes page layouts easy to do. I'm baffled by the decision to remove single-column layouts and the ability to move them up and down.

Single column sections and the ability to move them around (up/down) has been a seriously powerful feature that we rely heavily on for our extensive documentation.

Please consider implementing this feature before you absolve the ability to create new pages using the older page template and tools.

Kind regards,

Why have you removed the single layout option? 
It was by far one of the most useful features in Confluence. 

Is there an ETA for when we can have this feature back? 
The ticket had been open since Aug 2019, when does Atlassian look to have this resolved? 

It's extremely frustrating (and far more time-consuming than it used to be) to design a new page without being able to easily add a single column section, and without having the move up/down buttons available. I do hope these options will return soon.

Single column sections: I also need this feature back; currently I'm copying an old page to enable me to continue formatting in this manner and it's terribly frustrating. Additionally it's the only have to have images layout horizontally, otherwise Confluence defaults to a new line for each image 🙄

Maybe focus group some of this stuff before rolling out major changes? It seems the new editor has caused significantly more problems for customers than solutions. 

Confluences attempt to replace the single layout In the new editor is a digital dumpster fire....filled with chicken sh*t and dead dogs.

Why get rid of the single layout option? Who Thought that could possibly be a good idea?! That and the ability to move the layout up and down with a single click, were the best features. It’s what made confluence great. If we weren’t already committed to using it for so many things I would not have started using it now given the “improvements” you made. #makeconfluencegreatagain

My co-workers are all very concerned about sections moving away! They like the way they can arrange different types of information in different ways on the same page. Bring back this ability! 

I agree with most of the above comments.  I really don't understand the decision to remove the 1-column layout and the ability to move a section up or down.  Those were very useful features that I used quite a bit, and now they are going away for seemingly no reason. 

I found this particularly annoying: "We currently have no plans of introducing a single column layout as that can be achieved by removing all layouts and selecting either fixed or full width page layout."

No, Avinoam, that does not achieve what I want.  I want a single-column section, on a page with other sections that may have multiple columns.  Right now it looks like you can have a whole page that is single-column and that's all.  I want to have one page with a single-column section AND a multi-column section.  Please bring back this ability.

After three months I still agree that this is not a suggestion, but the removal of a key feature that much of the content and workflow in our company relied on.  If we are forced to reformat our legacy pages, retrain our staff, and revise our workflows we will be reviewing alternatives to Confluence first.  Our use of confluence has dropped dramatically in the last few months and we are cautious to add anymore content until Atlassian has an acceptable solution deployed.

Agree with Shannyn.

I see now that Confluence has by default switched to the new editor, and noted that the legacy version is going away soon (which is now annoyingly hidden). Please don't get rid of the legacy editor until these layout issues have been addressed. Being forced to use the new editor will absolutely ruin Confluence for my team's use case, as I'm sure it will many others. 

+1

We need to be able to add sections above and below the current section and be able to move them afterwards.

We also need to be able to create sections with different configurations, including one column sections. We need to be able to combine one column sections with multiple column sections in the same page.

+1 – we use this feature for re-arranging content

+1 asking for a resolution to both of these issues. I use Confluence to organize information. Every page I build includes a mix of single and multiple column sections. I map content to sections, and then rearrange the sections' order to create different groupings of content. Removing these two pieces of functionality negatively impacts the usefulness of Confluence as a content design tool for me.

"We currently have no plans of introducing a single column layout as that can be achieved by removing all layouts and selecting either fixed or full width page layout."

I'd ask to reconsider this.  Advantage of the 1-column layout is that it lets you control width for a particular section of the page and not the entire page.  It can also serve as a mechanism to group 1-column content to, once the feature is rolled out, move the content around the page as a group instead of copy/paste or piece-meal.

For myself I find it useful to control areas of the page that have images with text wrapping.  If you align an image to the right/left and let a small amount of text flow around it that doesn't take up the full height of that image, you'll need to add carriage returns after that text to push down the text that follows if if you don't want that next section of text to appear alongside the image (think of a how-to doc layout).  Unfortunately this doesn't work very well as you adjust the width of the window and affect the text wrapping.  Although you could use a 2-column approach, this gives you less control over the width of the image which can lead to unappealing white space.  Right now I've taken to either adapting to a 2-column layout of using a horizontal rule as a forced "spacer" to push the next paragraph below the image.  I'd much rather just have the whole thing in a 1-column section (basically how I'd use a <div></div>) and group my sections up with those for better formatting.

You've already got the 2+ columns built in there so I can't help but think that this is purely a design decision and not a decision that requires much actual development behind it.  Give us more tools, we'll use them.

"We currently have no plans of introducing a single column layout as that can be achieved by removing all layouts and selecting either fixed or full width page layout."

This isn't an acceptable workaround. Many of us use different formats for different sections of a document. You prioritized adding emoijis over an actual feature that your users want and need, so please consider bumping the priority on this one to something better than "long term backlog". This is making the new editor completely unusable, hopefully nobody phases out legacy before this is addressed. 

"Options to Move to top/bottom: To quickly insert a new section above the page location. For larger pages, this quickly helped users to insert new content into a specific part"

The inability to do this makes reorganizing existing documents more time consuming and error prone. I use Confluence daily to create and maintain content and this change has made the user experience much worse. 

Hi all,

Thank you for creating this ticket! We've currently actively looking into the ability to move/copy/paste layouts in an easier way, as well as make the transition between no layouts to layouts a lot smoother (i.e. stacking of information). We currently have no plans of introducing a single column layout as that can be achieved by removing all layouts and selecting either fixed or full width page layout.

You can also find this ticket and more on our public roadmap here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html

Thanks,

Avinoam

+1 for the ability to create a 1-column section.  I'm using horizontal rules as a work around to keep things separated.  This would especially help when using images set up to have text wrap around.

Ditto to Helen's and Matt's comments +1

Being able to move a section up or down with one click was really useful. Please bring back this functionality.

+1, agree with Matt Holmes and Peter Chung. Removing core functionality is so painful

Organizing a page with multiple areas of information used to be a fairly simple matter.  Now, it is confusing and painful (and requires additional retraining.) 

This is a really terrible choice in my opinion. I don't understand why y'all would remove this formatting option, to force multiple columns, especially when some default Jira reports and such get broken in said columns due to formatting limitations. Why make your product less useful, less appealing, and less customizable. This sort of backwards "improvements" that removes functionality is reason enough for me to move away from using your product. I cannot justify why we should use Confluence when even basic functions are removed and made inaccessible.

Furthermore, this workaround by using the default psacing outside of the sections/columns does not work right because the formatting from the previous section carries over, if sections were Centered, the default space will center the text or whatever else I put in it.