How To Add Tables To WordPress Posts And Pages

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.

The WordPress visual editor is great, but there are some things that the default editor doesn’t let you do, such as giving you the option to create tables without having to learn code.

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 most non-technical WordPress users, this is simply not a practical option.

Fortunately, WordPress plugins let you do almost anything you can imagine, and creating tables is no exception.

In this tutorial you will learn how to create and add tables easily into your WordPress posts and pages with no coding skills required.

How To Create And Add Tables In Posts And Pages In WordPress

To create and add tables into your WordPress content 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 does not require you to have any knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. It provides a simple interface that allows you to easily edit table data. Your 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 visitors. You can easily insert tables into your page content using shortcodes and even display these using text widgets.

You can also import and export a table from/to CSV files (e.g. from Excel), HTML files, and JSON formats.

This plugin was created by Tobias Bäthge and is licensed as Free Software under GNU General Public License 2 (GPL 2).

How To Use TablePress Plugin For WP – Tutorial

To create and add tables to WordPress posts and pages, install and activate the TablePress plugin.

Download this plugin here:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress

Or install it directly from within your own WordPress Dashboard …

After the plugin has been installed and activated, you will see a new menu item has been added to your WordPress 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 change the position of the TablePress menu entry in your WP admin menu.

By default, the menu entry displays around 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 Dashboard menu by selecting “Top-level (middle)” in the User Options > Admin menu entry dropdown menu …

The TablePress menu entry will now display closer towards the top section of your admin menu …

You can also play with other options in the “Plugin Options” tab, like table formatting styles, default language, and so on. Leave all settings as they are if you don’t need to change things in this area.

With TablePress, you create and edit tables within the plugin screen. Tables are then inserted via a shortcode into your pages and posts. The tables will then display after your content is published.

The great thing about doing this is that you can easily modify the information inside your tables without having to touch your pages and posts. TablePress then updates all of your table information in all locations where the table has been added to your content.

To create a new table select TablePress > Add New Table …

Enter a 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, 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 your 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 inside a post or page by simply inserting 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 very easy.

In the “Table Content” section, just click inside the cell and type or paste your content. You can add text, images and HTML formatting to your content (e.g. add bold text, insert links, etc …)

Once your new table is created, displays additional options for configuring 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 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 content after creating it in the “Table Manipulation” subsection. You can insert links or images, hide, show, insert, delete and duplicate selected columns and rows, add new rows and columns, combine cells, etc …

You can also enable JavaScript library features in your tables that will allow your visitors to sort, filter and search your table content, change 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 preview your table anytime, by clicking on the Preview button …

A preview window will open allowing you to preview the table. Certain features such as the 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 save your new table information …

Once you have created one or more tables, you can view a list of all your tables by going to TablePress > All Tables …

All the tables you have created are listed here. You can edit, see the shortcode, copy, delete, export and preview tables …

How To Use The Shortcode To Embed Tables Into Your Page Content

You can insert tables into pages and blog posts using a shortcode.

Click on the Show Shortcode menu item under your table title to get the shortcode …

The plugin also adds a shortcode menu icon 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 show 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 Text Editor Screen

Clicking on the menu icon brings up a list of all your available tables.

Select the table you want to add to the content and click Insert Shortcode …

Your TablePress shortcode will be added …

The table 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 edit information after publishing the table without having to open your post or page. Just tweak the content in the plugin area, then save the new table settings and refresh your content to view the updated content.

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 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, click on TablePress > Export a Table in your admin menu …

In the “Export Tables” section, choose the table(s) you want 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 changing and resaving your file, you can then easily re-import the table into WordPress.

To import a table into WordPress from your hard drive, go to the Dashboard 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 resembling a webpage, 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 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 using the plugin, including where to access documentation about additional 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 an extremely powerful and feature-rich free plugin will help you easily create and insert tables into your site content.

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