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 format that can make your information easier to understand.
WordPress offers a feature-rich visual editor, but there are some things that it doesn’t let you do by default, such as letting you create tables without having to learn code.
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 WordPress users, this is simply not a practical option.
Fortunately, you can do almost anything you can imagine on a WordPress site with plugins, and inserting tables into your content is no exception.
In this tutorial you will learn how to easily create and add tables into your pages and blog posts without requiring knowledge of HTML or CSS or coding skills.
How To Create And Insert Tables Into WordPress Pages And Posts Without Programming Skills
To add tables to your WordPress posts or pages without touching code, we’ll use a FREE plugin called TablePress.
WP Plugin – TablePress
A very powerful and time-saving WordPress plugin for creating, editing and managing tables in WordPress is TablePress.
TablePress doesn’t require you to have any knowledge or skills coding HTML, CSS, etc. It provides a simple interface that lets you easily edit your table data. Tables can contain any kind of data, even formulas.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to include features like pagination, sorting, filtering, and more for site users. You can easily insert tables into your page content using shortcodes and even 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 formats.
The plugin was developed by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).
Using TablePress Plugin For WordPress – Tutorial
To create and manage tables in WordPress using TablePress, first install and activate the TablePress plugin.
You can download this plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it from your own Dashboard …
After installing and activating the plugin, a new menu item will get added to your main menu called TablePress …
Click on TablePress and choose 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 change the position of the TablePress menu entry in your admin menu.
Normally, the menu item appears somewhere around the middle of your menu column. If you plan to use this plugin a lot, then you can easily position the menu item towards the top of the admin menu by choosing “Top-level (middle)” on the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu entry now shows closer to the top of your menu …
You can also specify other plugin options in the “Plugin Options” section, such as table formatting styles, default language, etc. If you don’t need to modify these settings, then just leave the default options.
With TablePress, tables are created and edited within the plugin area. Tables are then placed via a shortcode into your pages and posts. Your table will then display or update when saving and publishing your post.
The great thing about working directly from the plugin is that you can easily modify the information inside your tables without having to manually edit your posts. The plugin then updates all of your table information everywhere where the table has been added to your content.
To add a new table select TablePress > Add New Table …
Type in the table 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 change the name, description and size of any table you create at anytime…
Once your new table is created, it will be added to the “All Tables” list and be assigned a unique Shortcode ID …
The TablePress shortcode allows you to easily insert tables anywhere inside a post or page by simply typing or copying and pasting the shortcode wherever you want to display your table …
Once you have created a new table, adding content to it is easy.
In the “Table Content” section, click in the cell and type or paste the content you want to display. 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, you will see a number of additional options that will allow you to configure your table.
For example, in the “Table Options” area 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 colors on consecutive rows, 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 various edits on your table, like adding images and links, hiding, showing, inserting, deleting and cloning 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 site visitors to sort, filter and search your table content, set 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 on the Preview button …
A preview window will open allowing you to preview your table. Certain features like 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 update your table data …
Once you have created one or more tables, you can view a list of all your tables by going to TablePress > All Tables …
All your tables are displayed in a list. You can edit, see the shortcode, copy, export, delete and preview tables …
Using The Shortcode
You embed tables inside any pages and posts with 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 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 your 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 WordPress editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In WordPress HTML Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon opens a window containing a list of all tables.
Select the table you want to embed in your post or page and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be added …
Publish the 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 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 information.
Another great time-saving feature of the TablePress plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding new 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 a table, select TablePress > Export a Table in the admin menu …
In the “Export Tables” section, select the table(s) you would like 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 your table file, you can then easily re-import the table into WordPress.
To import a table into WordPress, go to the Dashboard menu and choose 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 a compressed (ZIP) file and select whether to import a table as a new table or to replace an existing table.
For more information about using TablePress, including where to access the plugin documentation for additional features, get plugin support, 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 a very useful time saving free plugin will help you easily create and insert tables into your page content.
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