If you’ve ever edited a SharePoint 2013 page with web parts and tried to drag them around, you’ve probably experienced frustration over how bad it works. I don’t know of a quick fix for this, but here are a few tips that might help you a little bit:
- First of all make sure that you are using Internet Explorer 9 or 10. IE9 works best. Other browsers, including IE11(!), will not work in a satisfactory way.
Tip: In Internet Explorer, press F12 to open the developer tools. In the top right corner of this toolbar you should see a dropdown menu for selecting “document mode”. Use this to revert back to previous version of Internet Explorer even if you have the latest version. (Note that “Edge” in this context refers to the lastest rendering engine (typically IE11) and not the new web browser from Microsoft with the same name.)
- Suppose that you want to add space between two web parts (or in between the top border and the first web part). It’s seems impossible to place the cursor in between the web parts. But you can place the cursor at the very bottom of the web part zone, below the last web part. Do this and hit enter a few times to make extra room at the bottom. Now you can drag the last web part downwards, and thus get space above it. When you drag it, do so until you see the cursor appear in the new space that you just created, before you drop it.
- Try to drag a web part and simply drop it on top of the web part above. Usually this will reorder them.
- If you mess up, Ctrl+Z usually works to undo the last steps.
- To move a web part to another zone on the page, open the web part properties for that web part. In the section named “layouts” you can choose what web part zone it should be placed in.
- When everything else fails, remove the web part and add it again. New web parts are always added to the top of the web part zone. Use this fact to plan the order of the web parts.