The ability to easily add tables to your pages can be very useful. Tables are great for sorting and presenting data to visitors in a way that makes your information easier to understand.
The WordPress visual editor offers many great features, but there are some things that the default editor won’t let you do, such as giving you the option to easily create tables.
Although you can add tables manually to your content in WordPress if you know HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), for many non-technical users, this is simply not a practical option.
Fortunately, WordPress plugins let you do almost anything you can imagine, and adding tables is no exception.
In this tutorial you will learn how to easily create and add tables into your content without requiring knowledge of HTML or CSS or coding skills.
How To Easily Create And Insert Tables Into WordPress Without Touching Code
If you want to create and add tables into your WordPress content and don’t have the skills to create tables using HTML or CSS, the step-by-step tutorial below will show you how to easily add tables into your WordPress posts and pages using a FREE plugin called TablePress.
TablePress – WP Plugin
A powerful and time-saving plugin for creating, editing and managing tables in WordPress is TablePress.
TablePress does not require you to have any knowledge or skills coding HTML, CSS, etc. The plugin lets you easily edit your table data. Tables can contain any kind of data, even formulas.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to add features like sorting, pagination, filtering, and more for your site visitors. You can easily insert tables into your post content using shortcodes and even display tables using text widgets.
Tables can also be imported and exported from/to CSV files (e.g. from Excel), HTML files, and JSON formats.
The plugin was created by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).
How To Use TablePress – Step-By-Step Tutorial
To create and manage tables in WordPress posts or pages, first install and activate the TablePress plugin.
Download this plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it directly from within your own Dashboard …
After the plugin has been installed and activated, a new menu item will be added to your main menu called TablePress …
Click on TablePress and select Plugin Options from the list of submenus …
The “Plugin Options” screen affects the plugin’s behavior in different areas of your site …
For example, in the “User Options” section, you can specify the position of the TablePress menu entry in your admin menu.
Normally, the menu item appears around the middle of your menu bar. If you plan to use this plugin a lot, then you can easily position the menu option closer to the top of the admin menu by choosing “Top-level (middle)” in the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu item now shows at the top of the menu …
You can also specify other options in the “Plugin Options” section, like table formatting styles, default language, and so on. If you don’t need to change this section, simply leave the default options.
With TablePress, you create and edit your tables inside the plugin section. Tables are then inserted via a shortcode into your pages. Your tables will then display or update when your content is published or updated.
The great thing about working directly from the plugin is that you can easily change the data inside your tables without having to touch your pages and posts. TablePress then updates all of your table data everywhere where the table has been added to your content.
To create a new table select TablePress > Add New Table …
Enter the name, a description (optional), and the number of rows and columns you want for your new table into the “Add New Table” form in the Add New tab, then click on the Add Table button to create your new table. You can edit the name, description and size of your table at anytime…
Once the new table is created, it will get added to the “All Tables” list and get assigned a unique Shortcode ID …
The TablePress shortcode allows you to easily insert tables anywhere inside a post or page simply by typing or copying and pasting the shortcode wherever you want your tables to display …
Once you have created a new table, adding content to the table is really easy.
In the “Table Content” section, just click in the cell and either type or paste the content you want to display. You can add text, images and HTML formatting to your content (e.g. add bold text, insert links, etc …)
After your new table has been created, displays additional options for configuring your table.
For example, in the “Table Options” section you can specify the first row of your table to be the table header or the last row of the table to be the table footer, display alternate background colours on consecutive rows, highlight a row when visitors hover their mouse over the table, display the table name and description above or below the table, and more …
You can also modify your table content after creating it in the “Table Manipulation” section. You can perform a range of different table operations, such as inserting images and links, hiding, showing, inserting, deleting and cloning selected columns and rows, adding new columns and rows, combining cells, etc …
You can also enable JavaScript library features in your tables, such as allowing your site users to sort, filter and search your table content, set the number of table rows showing on your site (and let visitors change the number of rows displayed), display table information, etc …
You can preview your table anytime, by clicking on the Preview button …
A preview window will open in your browser displaying your table. Certain features such as the JavaScript options are disabled in preview mode, but will display when your table is published …
Remember to click the Save Changes button after you are done editing to save your table information …
Once you have created one or more tables, you can view a list of all your tables by selecting TablePress > All Tables …
All your tables are listed here. You can edit, see shortcodes, copy, export, delete and preview tables …
Using The Shortcode To Insert Tables Into Your Pages And Blog Posts
You embed tables into content using a shortcode.
Click on the Show Shortcode menu item under your table title to get the shortcode …
The plugin also adds a menu item to your WordPress editor. This allows you to easily insert tables into your posts and pages while working on your content.
Place your mouse cursor where you want your table to appear then click the TablePress menu icon …
TablePress Menu Icon In Visual Editor Screen
Note: You can also add a table when working inside the “Text” area of the WP editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In WordPress HTML Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon displays a list of all existing tables.
Select the table you want to embed into the content and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be placed in the location you specified …
The table will display as soon as you publish your post or page …
As stated earlier, one of the great things about TablePress is that you can change things after publishing the table without having to open your post or page. Edit the content in the plugin area, then save the new table settings and refresh your post to view the updated information.
Another great time-saving feature of the TablePress plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding data to an existing table, you can simply export your current table, then add new items, make changes, etc. You can then re-import your exported file with the news changes and your table content will be automatically updated throughout your site.
To export an existing table, select TablePress > Export a Table in the admin menu …
In the “Export Tables” section, select the table(s) you would like to export (tip: select multiple tables by holding down the “Ctrl” key), then select the Export Format you want(e.g. CSV) and any other export options you’d like to make and click on the Export Table button to download the file to your hard drive …
After editing and resaving your table file, you can then reimport your table into WordPress.
To import a table into WordPress from your hard drive, select TablePress > Import a Table …
TablePress can import tables from existing data, such as CSV file data, from a spreadsheet application (e.g. Excel), an HTML file resembling a webpage, or its own format. You can also import existing tables from the WP-Table Reloaded plugin
To import a table, select and enter the import source in the “Import Tables” section. You can also import multiple tables from compressed (ZIP) files and select whether to import a table as a new table or replace an existing table.
To learn more about the plugin, including accessing the plugin documentation for extra features, or get technical support for the plugin, contact the plugin developer, etc., click on the “About Tab” in the plugin admin section, or select TablePress > About TablePress …
As you can see, TablePress is a very powerful and feature-rich free plugin will help you easily create and embed tables into your page content.
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