Being able to provide visitors with tables on 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 it won’t do by default, 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 not a realistic option.
Fortunately, you can do almost anything you can imagine on a WordPress site with plugins, and creating tables is no exception.
In this tutorial you will learn how to create and add tables easily into your WordPress posts and pages with no coding skills required.
How To Insert Tables With WordPress
To create and add tables into your WordPress content with no coding skills required, we’ll use a FREE WordPress plugin called TablePress.
TablePress
A very powerful and time-saving plugin for creating, editing and managing tables in WordPress is TablePress.
TablePress doesn’t require you to have any knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. It provides a simple interface that lets you easily edit your table data. Your tables can contain any type of data, even formulas.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to include features like pagination, sorting, filtering, and more for your visitors. You can insert tables into your posts and pages using shortcodes and display tables inside text widgets.
A table can also be imported and exported from/to CSV files (e.g. from Excel), HTML files, and JSON.
The plugin was developed by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).
How To Use TablePress Plugin For WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial
To create and add tables to WordPress, install and activate the TablePress plugin.
Download this plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it from within your own Dashboard …
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, a new menu item will get added to your admin menu called TablePress …
Click on TablePress and choose Plugin Options from the submenu list …
The “Plugin Options” page affects the plugin’s styling and display settings …
For example, in the “User Options” section, you can change the position of the TablePress menu entry in your admin menu.
Normally, the menu item displays somewhere near the middle of your menu column. If you plan to use this plugin often, then you can position the menu item close to the top of the menu by choosing “Top-level (middle)” in the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu item will now show at the top area of the menu list …
You can also play with other plugin options in the “Plugin Options” area, 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, you create edit and format tables inside the plugin area. Tables are then added via a shortcode into your pages. The tables will then display or update when your post or page is published or updated.
The advantage of doing this is that you can easily modify the data in your tables without having to manually edit your pages. TablePress then updates all of your table data inside all posts and pages where the table has been added to your content.
To create a new table select TablePress > Add New Table …
Type in a name, a description (optional), 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 edit the name, description and size of your tables at anytime…
Once the new table is created, it will display 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 to display a table …
Once a new table has been created, adding content to it is really easy.
In the “Table Content” section, just click inside the cell and type or paste your content. You can add text, images and HTML formatting to your content (e.g. add bold text, insert hyperlinks, etc …)
Once your new table is created, additional options appear that let you configure your table.
For example, in the “Table Options” section you can select 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 color, highlight a row when visitors hover their mouse over the table, show the table name and description above or below the table, and more …
You can also modify your table information after it has been created in the “Table Manipulation” subsection. You can perform various table operations, 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 visitors to sort, filter and search your table content, set the number of table rows showing on your content (and also allow users to specify 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 in your browser displaying the table. Certain features such as the JavaScript options are disabled in preview mode, but will display once your post or page is published …
Click the Save Changes button when finished to update your new table data …
After you have created one or more tables, you can view a list of all your tables by going to TablePress > All Tables …
A list of all your tables will be displayed in this section. You can edit, see shortcodes, copy, delete, export and preview tables …
Using The Shortcode
You insert a table into any pages and posts using the TablePress shortcode.
Get the shortcode for your tables by clicking on the Show Shortcode menu item under the table title to get the shortcode …
The plugin also adds a shortcode menu icon 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 show then click the TablePress menu icon …
TablePress Menu Icon In Visual Editor Screen
Note: You can also insert a table when working inside the “Text” area of the editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In WordPress Text 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 embed in your content and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be inserted …
Publish the post or page to view your table …
As stated earlier, one of the great things about TablePress is that you can change data after publishing the table without having to edit your post or page. Edit the content in the plugin area, then save your new table settings and refresh your post to view the updated information.
Another great time-saving feature of this plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding 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, choose 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 table file to your hard drive …
After making changes and resaving the table file, you can then reimport the 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, an HTML file resembling a webpage, or its own format.
To import a table, select and enter the import source in the “Import Tables” area. You can also import multiple tables from a ZIP file and select whether to import a table as a new table or replace an existing table.
For more information about TablePress, including accessing the plugin documentation for additional 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 an extremely powerful time saving plugin that is free and will help you easily create and embed tables into your site content.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum