Being able to provide visitors with tables on your website 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 doesn’t let you do, such as giving you the option to create tables without having to learn code.
Although you can add tables manually to your content in WordPress if you have knowledge of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), for many non-technical WordPress users, this is simply not a realistic option.
Fortunately, WordPress plugins give users almost unlimited expansion capabilities, and inserting tables into your content is no exception.
In this tutorial you will learn how to easily create and add tables into your site’s pages with no coding skills required.
Adding Tables Into Your Content Easily In WordPress
If you want to create and add tables to your WordPress posts or pages without touching code, the step-by-step tutorial below will show you how to easily do this using a FREE plugin called TablePress.
TablePress – WordPress Plugin
TablePress is a great WordPress plugin that makes creating, editing and managing tables in WordPress a very simple and easy process.
TablePress requires no knowledge or skills coding HTML, CSS, etc. The plugin provides a simple interface that allows you to easily edit your table data. You can add any type of data, even formulas to your tables.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to include features like sorting, pagination, filtering, and more for your visitors. You can insert tables into your page content using shortcodes and even display tables inside text widgets.
Tables can also be imported and exported from/to CSV files (e.g. from Excel), HTML files, and JSON.
This plugin was developed by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).
Using TablePress – Step-By-Step Tutorial
To create and manage tables in WordPress using TablePress, first install and activate the TablePress plugin.
You can download the plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it from your own WordPress Dashboard …
After installing and activating the plugin, you will see a new menu item added to your main menu called TablePress …
Click on TablePress and select Plugin Options from the list of submenus …
The “Plugin Options” area controls your plugin styling and display settings …
For example, in the “User Options” section, you can modify where the TablePress menu entry appears on your WP admin menu.
Normally, the menu entry displays somewhere near the middle of your menu column. If you plan to use this plugin often, then you can easily position the menu option closer to the top of the admin menu by specifying “Top-level (middle)” on the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu entry now appears near the top of your menu …
You can also play with other plugin options in the “Plugin Options” tab, such as formatting styles for your tables, default language, and so on. If you don’t need to modify these settings, then just leave the default options.
With TablePress, you create and edit tables within the plugin section. Tables are then placed via a shortcode into your content. The tables will then display when your post or page is published.
The advantage of working directly from the plugin is that you can easily update the information inside your tables without having to open any of your posts and pages. The plugin then updates all of your table information in all instances where the table has been added to your content.
To create a new table select TablePress > Add New Table …
Enter a table name, an optional description, and the number of rows and columns you would like 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 change the name, description and size of any table you create at anytime…
Once your new table has been created, it will be listed in the “All Tables” list and be assigned a unique Shortcode ID …
The TablePress shortcode allows you to easily add tables anywhere inside a post or page by simply inserting or copying and pasting the shortcode wherever you want your tables to display …
Once a new table has been created, adding content to it is very easy.
In the “Table Content” section, click inside the cell and type or paste the content you want to display. You can add text, images and format your content (e.g. add bold text, insert links, etc …)
After your new table has been created, the plugin will display 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, make the background of consecutive rows alternate in colour, highlight a row when visitors hover their mouse over the table, print the table name and description above or below the table, and more …
You can also edit your table after it has been created in the “Table Manipulation” subsection. You can perform a range of manipulations on your table, like adding images or links, hiding, showing, inserting, deleting and duplicating selected rows and columns, adding new rows and columns, 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, change the number of table rows showing on your content (and let visitors change the number of rows displayed), display table information, etc …
You can see how your table looks anytime, by clicking the Preview button …
A preview window will open on your web browser displaying your table. Certain features like JavaScript options are disabled in preview mode, but will display once your table is published …
Remember to click the Save Changes button when finished to update your table data …
Once you have created one or more tables, you can view a list of all your tables by selecting TablePress > All Tables …
A list of all your tables will be displayed in this screen. You can edit, see shortcodes, copy, export, delete and preview your tables …
Using The Shortcode To Insert Tables Into Your Posts And Pages
You embed a table into content using a shortcode.
You can get the shortcode for your tables by clicking on the Show Shortcode menu item under your table title to get the shortcode …
The plugin also adds a shortcode menu icon to your WordPress content editor. This allows you to easily insert tables into your posts and pages while working on your content.
Place your cursor where you want the table to show then click the TablePress menu icon …
TablePress Menu Icon In Visual Editor Screen
Note: You can also insert a table when working in the “Text” area of the WordPress editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In HTML Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon displays a list of your existing tables.
Select the table you want to insert into the content and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be inserted into your content …
Publish the post or page to display your table contents …
As stated earlier, one of the great things about TablePress is that you can change things after publishing the table without having to edit your post or page. Just tweak the content in the plugin area, then save your new table settings and refresh your content to view the updated content.
Another great time-saving feature of the TablePress plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding more data to an existing table, just export your current table, then add new data, make changes, etc. You can then re-import your table 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 your admin menu …
In the “Export Tables” section, select the table(s) to export (you can 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 table file to your hard drive …
After editing and resaving your file, you can then reimport the table into WordPress.
To import a table into WordPress from your hard drive, go to your Dashboard menu and select TablePress > Import a Table …
TablePress can import tables from existing data, such as CSV file data, from a spreadsheet application, an HTML file resembling a webpage, or its own JSON format.
To import a table, select and enter the source in the “Import Tables” section. You can also import multiple tables from ZIP files and choose whether to import tables as a new table or replace an existing table.
To learn more about using TablePress, including accessing the plugin documentation for extra features, get technical support for the plugin, contact the plugin author, etc., click on the “About Tab” in the plugin admin section, or select TablePress > About TablePress …
As you can see, TablePress is quite a powerful and feature-rich plugin that is free and will help you easily create and add tables into your site content.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)