The ability to easily add tables to your content can be very useful. Tables are great for sorting and presenting data to visitors in a way that makes your information easier to understand.
WordPress offers a feature-rich visual editor, but there are some things that it doesn’t do by default, such as letting you easily create tables.
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 most non-technical users, this is simply not a practical option.
Fortunately, WordPress plugins give users almost unlimited expansion capabilities, and creating tables is no exception.
In this tutorial you will learn how to create and add tables easily into your posts and pages with no coding skills required.
How To Add Tables Into Your Content With WordPress
To add tables to your WordPress posts or pages with no HTML or CSS knowledge required, we’ll use a FREE plugin called TablePress.
TablePress – WordPress Plugin
A powerful and time-saving plugin that makes creating, editing and managing tables in WordPress simple and easy is TablePress.
TablePress doesn’t require you to have any knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. The plugin lets you easily edit your table data. Your tables can contain any kind of data, even formulas.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to add features like pagination, sorting, filtering, and more for your visitors. You can easily include the tables into your posts and pages using shortcodes and display tables inside text widgets.
You can also import and export a table from/to CSV files (e.g. from Excel), HTML files, and JSON formats.
The plugin was written and developed by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).
Using TablePress – Tutorial
To create and add tables to WordPress posts or pages, first install and activate the TablePress plugin.
You can download the plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it directly from your own Dashboard …
Once the plugin has been installed and activated, a new menu item will be added to your WP 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 where the TablePress menu entry appears on your Dashboard menu.
Normally, the menu entry appears somewhere near the middle of your menu bar. If you plan to use this plugin a lot, then you can easily position the menu option closer to the top of the Dashboard menu by choosing “Top-level (middle)” in the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu item now shows closer towards the top of your admin menu …
You can also specify other options in the “Plugin Options” screen, like formatting styles for your tables, default language, etc. If you don’t need to modify this section, just leave the default options.
With TablePress, you create and edit tables inside the plugin area. Tables are then inserted via a shortcode into your WordPress posts and pages. The tables will then display or update after saving and publishing your pages or posts.
The great thing about doing this is that you can easily update the information in your tables without having to manually edit your posts. The plugin then updates all of your table information 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 the 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 change the name, description and size of any table you create 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 lets you easily insert tables anywhere in your content simply by typing or copying and pasting the shortcode wherever you want to display a table …
Once you have created a new table, adding content to the table is really easy.
In the “Table Content” section, just click inside the cell and either type or paste your content. You can add text, images and HTML formatting to your content (e.g. add bold text, insert links, etc …)
After your new table has been 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 and the last row of the table to be the table footer, display alternate background colors on consecutive rows, highlight a row when a visitor hovers their mouse over the table, show the table name and description above or below the table, and more …
You can also edit your table information after creating it in the “Table Manipulation” area. You can perform a range of different table operations, such as adding links and images, hiding, showing, inserting, deleting and cloning 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, set the number of table rows showing on your pages (and let visitors 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 displaying the table. Certain features such as the JavaScript options are disabled in preview mode, but will display when your post or page is published …
Remember to click the Save Changes button when finished to update your table information …
To view a list of all your tables TablePress > All Tables …
All the tables you have created are displayed in this section. You can edit, see the shortcode, copy, delete, export and preview your tables …
Using The TablePress Shortcode
You can insert tables into any page content with the TablePress shortcode.
Click on the Show Shortcode menu item below 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 the table to appear then click the TablePress menu icon …
TablePress Menu Icon In Visual Editor Screen
Note: You can also add a table when working inside the “Text” area of the WP editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In HTML Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon brings up a list of your available tables.
Select the table you want to add to your content and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be added …
Publish the post or page to display the table contents …
As stated earlier, one of the great things about this plugin is that you can change data after publishing the table without having to edit your post or page. Tweak the content in the plugin area, then save the new table settings and refresh your page to view the updated information.
Another great time-saving feature of this plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding new data to an existing table, just export your current table, then add new items, make changes, etc. You can then re-import your exported 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 the WP admin menu …
In the “Export Tables” section, select the table(s) to export (tip: 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 re-import the table into WordPress.
To import a table, go to your sidebar 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, or its own JSON 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” section. You can also import multiple tables from ZIP files and select whether to import tables as a new table or to replace an existing table.
To learn more about using the plugin, including accessing documentation about additional features, or get plugin support, contact the plugin developer, 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 plugin that is free and will help you easily create and insert tables into your site content.
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