Being able to provide visitors with tables on your content can be really handy. Tables are great for sorting and presenting data to visitors in a format that can make your information easier to understand.
WordPress offers a great visual editor, but there are some things that the default editor doesn’t do, such as letting you easily create tables.
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 users, this is not a practical option.
Fortunately, you can do just about anything you can imagine on a WordPress site with plugins, and adding tables to your content is no exception.
In this tutorial you will learn how to create and insert tables easily into your WordPress posts and pages without requiring knowledge of HTML or CSS or coding skills.
Creating And Inserting Tables In WordPress
To add tables to your WordPress posts or pages with no coding skills required, we’ll use a FREE plugin called TablePress.
WordPress Plugin – TablePress
A powerful and time-saving plugin that makes creating, editing and managing tables in WordPress a very simple and easy process is TablePress.
TablePress requires no knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. It lets you easily edit your table data. You can add any kind of data to tables.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to add features like pagination, sorting, filtering, and more for your site visitors. You can include the tables into your page content 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 formats.
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 posts and pages, install and activate the TablePress plugin.
Download the plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it from within your own WP Dashboard …
After the plugin has been installed and activated, 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 affects the plugin’s behavior in different areas of your site …
For example, in the “User Options” section, you can change where the TablePress menu entry appears on your Dashboard menu.
Normally, the menu item displays somewhere around the middle of your menu bar. If you plan to use this plugin often, then you can easily position the menu option towards the top of the Dashboard menu by specifying “Top-level (middle)” in the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu entry will now appear near the top of the menu list …
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 change this section, then just leave the default options.
With TablePress, tables are created and formatted within the plugin screen. Tables are then placed via a shortcode into your text. Your tables will then display or update after publishing your post.
The great thing about doing this is that you can easily modify the data 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 want for your new table into the “Add New Table” form in the Add New tab, and click on the Add Table button to create your new table. You can edit the name, description and size of any table you create at anytime…
Once the new table is created, it will be added to the “All Tables” list and be assigned a unique Shortcode ID …
The TablePress shortcode lets you easily add tables anywhere in your content simply by typing or copying and pasting the shortcode wherever you want to display a table …
Once a new table has been created, adding content to the table 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 hyperlinks, etc …)
After your new table has been 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, display alternate background colors on consecutive rows, highlight rows 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 content after creating it in the “Table Manipulation” section. You can add images and links, hide, show, insert, delete and duplicate selected rows and columns, add new columns and rows, combine 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 post (and also allow users to 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 on your browser displaying your 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 update your new table data …
To view a list of all the tables you have created go to TablePress > All Tables …
All your tables are listed here. You can edit, see the shortcode, copy, delete, export and preview tables …
How To Use The Shortcode
You embed a table inside any posts and pages with the TablePress shortcode.
Click on the Show Shortcode menu item under the 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 be embedded then click the TablePress menu icon …
TablePress Menu Icon In WordPress Visual Editor Screen
Note: You can also add a table when working inside the “Text” area of the WordPress editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In WordPress Text Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon brings up a list of all your existing tables.
Select the table you want to embed into your content and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be inserted into your content …
The table contents 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 data after publishing the table without having to open your post or page. Change the content in the plugin area, then save your new table settings and refresh your post to view the updated content.
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 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 WP admin 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 file to your hard drive …
After editing and resaving your file, you can then easily reimport the table into WordPress.
To import a table, 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 compressed (ZIP) files and select whether to import a table as a new table or replace an existing table.
For more information about the plugin, including accessing the plugin documentation for extra features, or 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 and feature-rich free plugin will help you easily create and embed tables into your page content.
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