The ability to easily add tables to your pages can be really handy. Tables help you sort and present 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 it doesn’t let you 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 many non-technical users, this is simply 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 add tables easily into your posts and pages without requiring knowledge of HTML or CSS or coding skills.
How To Easily Create And Add Tables In WordPress With No Programming Skills Required
To create and add tables into your WordPress content with no HTML or CSS knowledge required, we’ll use a FREE WordPress plugin called TablePress.
WordPress Plugin – TablePress
A very powerful and time-saving plugin for creating, editing and managing tables in WordPress is TablePress.
TablePress does not require you to have any knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. It lets you easily edit your table data. You can add any type of data to your tables.
An additional JavaScript library can be used to include features like sorting, pagination, filtering, and more for visitors. You can insert tables into your page content using shortcodes and even display tables using text widgets.
A table can also be imported and exported from/to CSV files (e.g. from Excel), HTML files, and JSON formats.
This plugin was written and developed by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).
How To Use TablePress – Tutorial
To create and add tables to WordPress with TablePress, first install and activate the TablePress plugin.
Download this plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress
Or install it from your own Dashboard …
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, a new menu item will be added to your admin menu called TablePress …
Click on TablePress and select Plugin Options from the list of submenus …
The “Plugin Options” screen 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 item displays somewhere near the middle of your menu bar. If you plan to use this plugin a lot, then you can position the menu option closer to the top of your admin menu by choosing “Top-level (middle)” on the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …
The TablePress menu entry now appears at the top section 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, etc. Leave the settings as they are if you don’t need to change things in this area.
With TablePress, tables are created and edited inside the plugin section. Tables are then added via a shortcode into your pages and posts. Your tables will then display when publishing or updating your content.
The benefit of doing this is that you can easily modify the information in your tables without having to manually edit your pages and 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 …
Enter the 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, and click on the Add Table button to create your new table. You can change the name, description and size of your tables 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 add tables anywhere in your content by simply 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 very easy.
In the “Table Content” section, click inside the cell and either type or paste your content. 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, you will see additional options for configuring your table.
For example, in the “Table Options” section 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, make the background of consecutive rows alternate in colour, highlight rows 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 after it has been created in the “Table Manipulation” section. You can perform a range of different operations on your table, like adding images or links, hiding, showing, inserting, deleting and cloning selected columns and rows, adding new columns and rows, combining cells, etc …
You can also enable JavaScript library features in your tables, such as allowing visitors to sort, filter and search your table content, set the number of table rows showing on your posts (and let visitors specify 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 on your browser displaying the table. Certain features like JavaScript options are disabled in preview mode, but will display once your post or page is published …
Remember to click the Save Changes button after you are done editing to update your table information …
To view a list of all the tables you have created go to TablePress > All Tables …
A list of all your tables will be displayed in this section. You can edit, see the shortcode, copy, export, delete and preview tables …
Using The Shortcode
You can insert a table inside any content using 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 cursor where you want the table to be embedded then click the TablePress menu icon …
TablePress Menu Icon In Visual Editor Screen
Note: You can also add a table when working in the “Text” area of the WP editor …
TablePress Menu Icon In WordPress Text Editor Screen
Clicking on the menu icon opens a window containing a list of all your available tables.
Select the table you want to insert into the content and click Insert Shortcode …
Your TablePress shortcode will be added to your content …
The table and 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 information after publishing the table without having to open your post or page. 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 this plugin, is that if you plan to keep adding data to an existing table, you can simply export your current table, then add new data, 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 your main 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 file to your hard drive …
After editing and resaving your file, you can then easily reimport your table into WordPress.
To import a table into WordPress, 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. 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 compressed (ZIP) files and select whether to import tables as a new table or write over an existing table.
To learn more about the plugin, including accessing documentation about extra features, or 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 a very useful and feature-rich plugin that is free and will help you easily create and embed tables into your page content.
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