# Questions about displaying wide tables

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/questions-about-displaying-wide-tables/260042>\
**Category:** UX\
**Created:** [March 31, 2023, 2:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/questions-about-displaying-wide-tables/260042 "2023-03-31T02:45:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![jlc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jlc/32/251717_2.png) [@jlc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jlc)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2023, 2:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/questions-about-displaying-wide-tables/260042/1 "2023-03-31T02:45:32Z")

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I’m curious to understand more about the strategies that Discourse uses for displaying wide tables (that is, tables that are wide enough to overflow the containing box). This topic seems to indicate that Discourse will show an expand table button for wide tables:

> [@Expand Table button shows wrong table](https://meta.discourse.org/t/expand-table-button-shows-wrong-table/230969):
>
> I recently created a post that contained a couple of tables. The first table looked like this: Drug Example prescription(s) Feature(s) abacavir 300 mg mg by mouth twice daily 600 mg by mouth once daily Multiple templates for the same drug abacavir / dolutegravir / lamivudine 1 tablet by mouth daily Combination drug levonorgestrel One tablet by mouth as soon as possible within 72 hours of unprotected sexual intercourse or suspected contraceptive failure Free text dosing instructions …

And this topic seems to indicate that Discourse should show horizontal scroll bars for wide tables:

> [@Horizontal scroll bar for wide tables visible in Mobile?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/horizontal-scroll-bar-for-wide-tables-visible-in-mobile/94879):
>
> When wide tables exist, in the desktop theme there is a horizontal scroll bar that hints the visitor we can scroll left and right. However in the Mobile theme there is no such scroll bar and the wide table view is really not intuitive, with visitors not being aware that the table is wider than their screen width. Could we add a scroll bar for mobile as well? Discussion about this matter (however regarding only Desktop theme) occurred bere

But when viewing that first topic, I don’t see either of those behaviors for the second table (on either my phone or my (Chrome) web browser with a very small window width). What is the current expected Discourse behavior for wide tables?

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/questions-about-displaying-wide-tables/260042)._