Being able to provide visitors with tables on your pages can be really handy. Tables are great for sorting and presenting data to people in a way that makes your information easier to understand.
WordPress offers a great visual editor, but there are some things that the default editor won’t do, like being able to easily create tables.
Although you can create tables manually in WordPress if you know HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), for most non-technical WordPress users, this is simply not a realistic option.
Fortunately, you can do almost anything you can imagine on a WordPress site with plugins, and adding tables is no exception.
In this tutorial you will learn how to create and add tables easily into your site’s pages without requiring knowledge of HTML or CSS or coding skills.
Creating And Inserting Tables With WordPress
If you want to add tables into your WordPress content without touching code, then the step-by-step tutorial below will show you how to do this using a FREE plugin called TablePress.
TablePress
A very powerful and time-saving WordPress plugin for creating, editing and managing tables in WordPress is TablePress.
TablePress requires no knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. It provides a simple interface that allows you to easily edit your table data. You can add any kind of data, even formulas to your tables.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to add features like pagination, sorting, filtering, and more for your visitors. You can insert tables into your content using shortcodes and even display tables using 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).
Using TablePress WordPress Plugin – Tutorial
To create and add tables to WordPress posts or pages, install and activate the TablePress plugin.
You can download this plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it directly from your own Dashboard …
After the plugin has been installed and activated, you will see a new menu item in your Dashboard menu called TablePress …
Click on TablePress and choose Plugin Options from the submenu list …
The “Plugin Options” section affects the plugin’s styling and display settings …
For example, in the “User Options” section, you can change where the TablePress menu entry appears on your Dashboard menu.
Normally, the menu entry displays 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 near the top of your menu by selecting “Top-level (middle)” on the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu item now shows towards the top area of the menu …
You can also play with other options in the “Plugin Options” screen, such as table formatting styles, default language, and so on. Leave the default options as they are if you don’t need to change things in this area.
With TablePress, you create and edit your tables within the plugin section. Tables are then inserted via a shortcode into your pages. The tables will then display when saving and publishing your content.
The great thing about doing this is that you can easily update the information inside your tables without having to open any of your posts and pages. TablePress then updates all of your table data in all instances where the table has been added to your content.
To add 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, then click on the Add Table button to create your new table. You can change the name, description and size of any tables you create at anytime…
Once the new table has been created, it will appear in the “All Tables” list and get assigned a unique Shortcode ID …
The TablePress shortcode lets you easily insert tables anywhere in your content by simply inserting or copying and pasting the shortcode wherever you want your tables to display …
Once a new table has been created, adding content to the table is very easy.
In the “Table Content” section, just click in the cell and either type or paste the content you want to display. You can add text, images and format 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” section you can specify 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 colours on consecutive rows, highlight rows 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 various table operations, such as adding links or 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 that will allow visitors to sort, filter and search your table content, change the number of table rows displayed on your post (and let visitors change 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 allowing you to preview the table. Certain features like JavaScript options are disabled in preview mode, but will display when your table is published …
Click the Save Changes button when finished to update your table data …
To view a list of all your tables TablePress > All Tables …
All the tables you have created are listed here. You can edit, see shortcodes, copy, delete, export and preview your tables …
How To Use The Shortcode
You insert a table into your pages and blog posts with a 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 mouse cursor where you want your table to appear 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 editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In HTML Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon opens a window containing a list of all your tables.
Select the table you want to embed into the post or page and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be added to your content …
The table will display as soon as you publish your post or page …
As stated earlier, one of the great things about this plugin is that you can edit things after publishing the table without having to open your post or page. Edit the content in the plugin area, then save your new table settings and refresh your page to view the updated content.
Another great time-saving feature of the TablePress plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding more data to an existing table, you can simply export your current table, then add new items, 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) 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 table file, you can then easily re-import the table into WordPress.
To import a table, 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 format.
To import a table, select and enter the import source in the “Import Tables” section. You can also import multiple tables from a compressed (ZIP) file and select whether to import tables as a new table or write over an existing table.
For more information about the plugin, including accessing the plugin documentation for additional features, get technical 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 free plugin will help you easily create and insert tables into your page 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