Problem

When a user clicks on the Edit button in a Confluence Page that contains a Table Macro, the user is shown a blank page versus the actual page content. There are no visible ERROR messages in the Confluence log or the Catalina.out file. There is nothing that is presented to the user other than the blank page which *appears* not to have content. Cancelling the Edit returns the user to the rendered page with all content visible.

Diagnosis

As there are no visible signs of the ERROR in the logs, and the problem appears within the browser, the best method to diagnose the issue appears within the browser itself. Using the method described in Generating HAR files and Analysing Web Requests, generate a HAR file while attempting to edit the page. By reviewing the Console (as shown below) of your Developer Tools, you should see an ERROR message that appears in the Developer Tools or Console in-browser. In the example shown, the issue is discovered in a Bob Swift Advanced Tables plugin version 7.3.0, but this has also appeared in Bob Swift Table Library version 3.1.0 and was corrected in Table Library version 3.4.0.  This is described in TBLSORT-71 - tablesorter.js throws type charAt could not be defined exception when enable column sort is turned off.

You will see an ERROR message similar to:

Cause

There is a parameter within the two macros known to have experienced this issue that when unchecked, causes the resulting ERROR to occur. The problem is that if the auto sort column value is populated and the parameter enable column sorting has been unchecked in the macro, the editor will display a blank page. Nothing will be displayed to the user.

Workaround

You can resolve the issue by checking the enable column sorting parameter in the macro again. The editor will then render the page properly, as the javascript ERROR is no longer thrown in the page.

Resolution

This issue is being worked by the vendor at TBLSORT-71