Table rendering on iOS is scrunched up

What I did: Inserted a table in the agenda note on macOS. I opened it again on my iPhone to edit.

What happened: The text in the columns and rows were all scrunched up and rendered vertically instead of rendering horizontally.

What I expected: I expect the text to render horizontally as it does in “Apple Notes"

This is how Apple Notes renders it.

The simple answer is that the iPhone has much less horizontal space, and the text no longer fits on a single line.

I assume in Apple Notes you have to scroll the whole table sideways, is that right?

We would like to add some fix for this, but it is always a compromise. Eg. You get better layout on the iPhone screen, but if you print, your table will be chopped off, because paper doesn’t scroll sideways.

Let us know if you have ideas about how you think we should fix it.

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@drewmccormack, Thank you for taking a look!

I assume in Apple Notes you have to scroll the whole table sideways, is that right?

That’s correct. I need to scroll to the right to look at all the columns but I found that to be a much better experience since I can look at full words that I’ve added in those columns.

Let us know if you have ideas about how you think we should fix it.

Personally, I prefer the way that Apple Notes renders the table since I can parse the table data in a single glance and I rarely print my agenda notes.

@drewmccormack I guess most of the time printing happens on desktop, so scrolling on iPhone should not affect printing on desktop, these are two different use cases that do not contradict one another (if implemented properly).
I agree with @ak.anupindi that the preferred behavior to view the table in the app is horizontal scrolling.

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They aren’t really different. It is true that in this case you probably see everything on the Mac, but we also hear from people who complain if they add too many columns they wrap too much, even on the Mac. So the problem is universal to all devices, though you hit it quicker on iPhone.

In future we will probably have to have sideways scrolling on all platforms. It opens a can of worms with things like printing, PDF export etc, but I guess that is a compromise worth making.

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If sideways scrolling is implemented, is it possible to scale the table for a pdf print?

Similar to how in excel you could fit to page?

It’s all possible. But whatever we do, some people will probably not be happy with it. Eg. if you want a more WYSIWYG look of the table.

But you are right, we will probably need to scale it down somehow when printed.

Yea, understand you can’t make everyone happy. At least the scaled table for printing would be a print format many users may already be used too seeing in excel.

Keep up the great work!

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@drewmccormack thank you for taking a look and your insights. I’m a return user to the Agenda community (Notes → Agenda → Notion → Notes → Agenda :slight_smile: ) but I’m not sure how feature requests work. Will this be something that will be worked on in the next release?

It won’t be the next release. I can’t say exactly when something like this will come in, because it is quite a big change. Not something we can do in a day or two.

We have a roadmap with projects already mapped out for the coming months. After that we look at projects that have come up, and evaluate what we think will be most valuable to people. Table improvements is definitely on the list, but can’t say how it falls in relation to other high priority projects at this point in time.

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Thanks, @drewmccormack, I’ll keep an eye out for future release notes that mention anything related to tables :slight_smile:

@drewmccormack I can use some support on my tables being scrunched up also.

I just recently tried tables and everything seems really scrunched in comparison to the examples given in the guide.

I have included a screen shot of what I created versus what I saw on this thread.


Hmm, that is very scrunched up. What device is that? Mac? iPad?

Anything unusual about the table and content? I guess not, right?

Are all your tables like that? Does it matter if you first put in some text? Have you tried quitting the app completely, and opening it again?

Here is what I see creating a table out of the box on Mac.

This happens on both my iPhone and my iPad. The screen shot was from my iPad. I will test my mac.

I have also tried quitting the app multiple times. I have tried new notes, new projects, and even adding to previous notes with same results.

This seems to be isolated to my iOS devices. The table matches your on the Mac. I guess I can understand it being reduced on my iPhone screen but it seems strange on my iPad. I have an 11” iPad Pro for reference.

Yes, it is a bit odd that it would be so narrow on iPad. Will see if I can do something about it. Thanks!

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Update: tables in Agenda 14 on iPadOS should now show wider than before.

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