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 is great, 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 create tables manually 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 feasible 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 create and add tables easily into your content without requiring knowledge of HTML or CSS or coding skills.
Inserting Tables Into Your Content With WordPress
Follow the step-by-step tutorial below to learn how to easily add tables in WordPress using a FREE plugin called TablePress.
TablePress
A very 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. It lets you easily edit your table data. You can add any type of data, even formulas to tables.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to include features like sorting, pagination, filtering, and more for your site visitors. You can easily insert tables into your pages and blog posts using shortcodes and even display these inside text widgets.
You can also import and export a table from/to CSV files (e.g. from Excel), HTML files, and JSON.
TablePress was developed by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).
How To Use TablePress WordPress Plugin – Tutorial
To create and manage tables in WordPress, 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 installing and activating the plugin, a new menu item will get added to your admin menu called TablePress …
Click on TablePress and choose Plugin Options from the list of submenus …
The “Plugin Options” section controls your plugin styling and display settings …
For example, in the “User Options” section, you can specify the position of the TablePress menu entry in your Dashboard menu.
By default, the menu entry displays somewhere near the middle of your menu. If you plan to use this plugin a lot, then you can position the menu option near the top of your menu by specifying “Top-level (middle)” in the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu item will now appear towards the top section of the admin menu …
You can also specify other plugin options in the “Plugin Options” section, like formatting styles for your tables, default language, and so on. If you don’t need to modify these settings, just leave the default options.
With TablePress, tables are created and formatted inside the plugin area. Tables are then inserted via a shortcode into your content. Your table will then display or update after saving your page.
The benefit of working directly from the plugin is that you can easily modify the information in your tables without having to manually edit your pages and posts. TablePress then updates all of your table data inside all posts and pages where the table has been added to your content.
To add a new table select TablePress > Add New Table …
Enter the 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 your tables at anytime…
Once the new table has been created, it will appear in the “All Tables” list and be assigned a unique Shortcode ID …
The TablePress shortcode lets you easily add tables anywhere inside a post or page by simply typing or copying and pasting the shortcode wherever you want to display a table …
Once you have created a new table, adding content to it is easy.
In the “Table Content” section, just click in the cell and either type or paste your content. You can add text, images and HTML formatting to your content (e.g. bold or italicize words, insert links, etc …)
Once your new table is created, additional options appear that let you configure your table.
For example, in the “Table Options” area you can select the first row of your table to be the table header and 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 modify your table after creating it in the “Table Manipulation” section. You can perform a range of table edits, like inserting images and links, hiding, showing, inserting, deleting and duplicating selected columns and rows, adding new rows and columns, combining cells, etc …
You can also enable JavaScript library features in your tables that will allow your site users to sort, filter and search your table content, set the number of table rows displayed on your post (and let users 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 allowing you to preview the table. Certain features such as the JavaScript options are disabled in preview mode, but will display once your table is published …
Remember to click the Save Changes button after you are done editing to save your new table data …
To view a list of all your tables TablePress > All Tables …
A list of all the tables you have created will be displayed in this screen. You can edit, see shortcodes, copy, export, delete and preview tables …
How To Use The Shortcode To Insert Tables Into Your Posts And Pages
You can insert tables into your posts and pages with the TablePress shortcode.
Get the shortcode for your tables by clicking on the Show Shortcode menu item below 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 cursor where you want the table to be embedded 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 WP editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In WordPress HTML Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon opens a window containing a list of all the available tables you have created.
Select the table you want to add to your content and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be inserted …
Publish your post or page to display the table and table contents …
As stated earlier, one of the great things about TablePress is that you can edit data after publishing the table without having to edit your post or page. Edit the content in the plugin area, then save the new table settings and refresh your page to view the updated content.
Another great time-saving feature of this plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding more data to an existing table, just export your current table, then add new information, 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, click on TablePress > Export a Table in the main menu …
In the “Export Tables” section, select the table(s) you want 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 file to your hard drive …
After editing and resaving the table file, you can then easily reimport the table into WordPress.
To import a table, go to the sidebar menu and 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” area. You can import multiple tables from compressed (ZIP) files and choose whether to import a table as a new table or write over an existing table.
For more information about TablePress, including accessing the plugin documentation for extra features, or 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 free plugin will help you easily create and embed tables into your page content.
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