help:Table

{{lorem ipsum span|9}}

To center a table horizontally, use style {{kbd|margin: auto}}, which applies to the left and right margins. Text does not flow around centered tables as it does for floated tables; that is, no text appears to either side:

As it appears in a browser:

Text before table...

...text after table.

Style {{kbd|margin:auto}} may be combined with top and bottom margin in the standard way for CSS, e.g. style="margin:1em auto" defines top and bottom margins of 1em, and automatic (centered) left and right margins.

Tip: For Android Chrome, use:

:{| style="margin: auto; border: none;"{{efn|group=note|border: none;

to avoid an empty column in tables narrower than the browser window in Android Chrome.}}

Note: align="center" is deprecated in HTML5, and does not work well in Mediawiki software. For example; it will not override the left alignment of tables via class=wikitable.

See {{tl|Sticky header}} and {{tl|Sticky table start}}.

Nesting data tables with header cells makes it difficult for assistive screen readers to parse them sensibly.

Editors sometimes use headerless tables as an aid to content layout, especially where it is easier than the equivalent use of divs and CSS styling. For complex layouts, rowspan and colspan may be used, but again it is sometimes simpler and more maintainable to use nested tables.

{{em|Nested tables must start on a new line.}}

In the following example, five different tables are shown nested inside the cells of a sixth, main table. None has any header cells. Automatically, the two tables |A| and |B|B| are vertically aligned instead of the usual side-by-side of text characters in a cell. float is used to fix each of tables |C| and |D| to their own position within one cell of the table. This may be used for charts and schematics.

Note: width=X is obsolete in HTML 5, and so it could eventually be ignored by MediaWiki. See: Wikipedia: HTML 5#Table attributes. Use CSS styles or line breaks (
) instead.

This can be done with CSS but the easiest way on Wikipedia is to enclose the text of each heading in a {{tl|vertical header}} template. For example:

! {{vertical header|Date/Page}}

If the text includes an equals sign then replace it with {{=}}.

If you want to use sticky headers with vertical headers it is important to make the sticky header less tall for cell phone use. {{t|abbr}} is one way. Also by moving some info to the table caption. See example with various methods at {{tl|vertical header}}.

See width examples on this subpage. There it is easier to narrow the browser window and not lose one's place as on a long page such as here on Help:Table. Overall table width does not act the same on Wikipedia mobile view as it does on mobile view on webpages outside Wikipedia. See the subpage examples.

Setting strict widths (style="width:Xpx;" or style="width:Xem;") is discouraged for the most part on Wikipedia because it interferes with the ability of the browser to adjust content to suit the browser window, device size, portrait view, landscape view, zoom settings, user-end font size choices, and other constraints. Verbose notes columns are almost always a problem, especially when there are more than a few other columns. Editors sometimes try to make the notes column wider, which messes up the other columns. For this reason, verbose notes columns should be avoided, or the notes should be shortened and links to longer notes below the table should be added instead.

style=max-width:Xem can be used in table headers. The following table excerpt is adapted from [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult&oldid=1023784152 this version] of List of countries by wealth per adult. The goal is to narrow the data columns, and have the country names spread out on one line each. All of this makes it easier when scanning down a country list. But the country names have to wordwrap if needed (in narrow portrait views on some cell phones, etc.). So style=max-width:Xem was used in selected column heads. Em units are good because they increase in size along with the zoom setting. It is important to check if the max-width you have chosen also works correctly in cell phones, and is not breaking words. You may need to increase it a bit. Here is the relevant header wikitext:

{{t|sort under}} narrows the table columns further:

If using {{t|sticky header}}, then for cell phones even narrower headers are better:

{{static row numbers}}{{sticky header}}{{table alignment}}{{sort under}}

Here below is what the table looks like without style=max-width:Xem and without a caption.

Narrow your browser window to see how the table below contracts versus the ones above. The table above (even if some more columns are added) maintains one line per country for narrower browser and screen widths. So it is therefore more readable and scannable in long country tables. The table format below can greatly increase in number of lines, and require more vertical scrolling, especially if more columns are added.

{{static row numbers}}{{sticky header}}{{table alignment}}

To force initial column widths to specific requirements, rather than accepting the width of the widest text element in a column's cells, follow this example. Note that wrap-around of text is forced for columns where the width requires it. Do not use min-width:Xpx;

To set column widths in a table without headers, specify the width in the first cell for each column.

You can also use percentages, such as style="width: 50%;" to equalize the widths of a two-column table.

One application of setting the widths is aligning columns of consecutive tables. The following are separate tables, with columns set to 350px and 225px.

If the cell is too wide though this may not be a good idea in cell phones. Part of the table may extend past the screen (especially in portrait view).

Without nowrap, as it appears in a browser:

With nowrap, on both the Episode and Date columns, as it appears in a browser:

Row style (height, width, borders, text alignment, background color, bolding, italics, etc.) may be added to a wikitable row by appending CSS style properties to the row start line after the |- indicator.

Here is an example increasing the height of the middle row. The top row has italic text. The last row has bold text and a yellow background:

Note that the row also contains an id attribute; this will be explained later in the section about linking directly to a row.

Here is the table with a separate wikitext row for each row header cell. The data cells have plain unbolded text, and a lighter background.

• {{tl|Static row numbers}}
• {{tl|Row numbers}}

You can link directly to a row in a wikicode table, by including an id attribute on the line with the § row start indicator whose value is the anchor for the link. For example, you could code:

:|- id="mid"

and then link to it using The middle row is the tallest one.

which produces:

: The middle row is the tallest one.     (Click to try it out!){{hairspace}}

Regardless of whether wikitable format or HTML is used, the wikitext of the rows within a table, and sometimes even within a collection of tables, may have much in common, e.g.:

• the basic code for a table row
• code for color, alignment, and sorting mode
• fixed texts such as units
• special formats for sorting

In such a case, it can be useful to create a template that produces the syntax for a table row, with the data as parameters. This can have many advantages:

• easily changing the order of columns, or removing a column
• easily adding a new column if many elements of the new column are left blank (if the column is inserted and the existing fields are unnamed, use a named parameter for the new field to avoid adding blank parameter values to many template calls)
• computing fields from other fields, e.g. population density from population and area
• duplicating content and providing span tags with display: none; for the purpose of having one format for sorting and another for display
• easy specification of a format for a whole column, such as color and alignment

Example:

Using {{tlx|Help:Table/example row template}}

For a conditional row in a table, we can have:

With comments to explain how it works, where note how the second row is missing:

Note: The valign=... attribute is deprecated and MediaWiki may stop using it. See: Help:HTML in wikitext#Tables.

Note: Use {{t|Vertical align rows}} to align all rows at once.

By default, text is aligned to the vertical middle of the cell (2nd column in table below). CSS can be used to vertically align individual cells, or single rows.

The example below illustrates the need for top alignment of a row.

To align the text to the top of each cell in the row, apply the style="vertical-align: top;" CSS to the row.

Documentation and more options for the CSS vertical-align property is [https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visudet.html#propdef-vertical-align here].

{{clear}}

{{anchor|Pattern for arguments involving four sides|Clock order}}

File:Westclox Big Ben.jpg

Pattern for arguments:

The arguments to style="padding: " can be seen as being ordered by a 12-hour clock, starting at noon and going clockwise, in the following sense: "top" is associated with noon (i.e. 12 o'clock, the top of a clock), "right" is 3 o'clock, "bottom" is 6 o'clock, and "left" is 9 o'clock. The arguments are ordered clockwise starting at noon: top → right → bottom → left (see thisIn style="padding: 3em 4em 5%;", the value 4em is used for both the "left" padding and the "right" padding, so the order going clockwise is: top (3em) → right [and hence also left] (4em) → bottom (5%); there is no "→ left" in this case because the "left" padding has already been defined. In style="padding: 3em 5%;", the value 3em is used for both the "top" and "bottom" padding while the value 5% is used for both the "left" and "right" padding, so the order going clockwise is: top [and hence also bottom] (3em) → right [and hence also left] (5%); there is no "→ bottom" nor is there "→ left" in this case because the "bottom" and "left" padding have already been defined. The same reasoning also applies to style="padding: 1em 20px 8% 9em;", and style="padding: 3%;". footnote for an example with an explanation).

This same order is also used elsewhere, such as when specifying § cell borders with border-style: .

Setting default cell padding

Use cellpadding= to set the default padding for each cell in a table. If class=wikitable is used then cellpadding is ignored.

The default space between cells can be changed using cellspacing=.

If cellpadding is not used

{{clear}}

Using cellpadding=10:

Using cellpadding=0:

Using cellpadding=0 and cellspacing=0:

Note that only the image cells have individual borders, not the text. The lower hex-colors (such as: #616161) are closer to black. Typically, all borders in a table would be one specific color.

;Border styles

The style='border:' and style='border-style:' properties can accept the following arguments:

;Borders of a cell using border-top, border-right, border-bottom, border-left

border-top: solid 2px red;

border-right: dashed 3px green;
border-bottom: double 5px blue;
border-left: dotted 6px yellow;

border-top: solid 2px red;

border-right: dashed 3px green;
border-bottom: double 5px blue;
border-left: dotted 6px yellow;

;Top, right, bottom, and left borders of a cell using style='border-style:'

To set the left, right, bottom, or top border of a single cell, one may use style='border-style:' which takes between 1 and 4 arguments, each of which is either none, solid, double, dotted, dashed, groove, ridge, inset, outset, inherit, or initial.

These arguments are ordered according to the § pattern described here.

For instance, style="border-style: solid none solid none;" where the four parameters correspond respectively to the

{{in5}}'border-style: top right bottom left;'

borders of the cell.

For reasons described after this example, there are many ways to change the following {{em|code}} that would {{em|not}} result in any changes to the table that is actually {{em|displayed}}.

Note, however, that in the following table, none of the central cell's (i.e. Middle_Center's) borders are removed despite the code style="border-style: none none none none;":

This happens because the code class="wikitable" places a border (top, right, bottom, and left) around {{em|every}} cell in the table so that, for instance, there are actually {{em|two}} borders between the cells "Middle_Center" and "Middle_Right".

So to remove the border between cells "Middle_Center" and "Middle_Right", it is necessary to remove both the right border of "Middle_Center" {{em|and}} the left border of "Middle_Right":

To remove selected external borders of a wikitable, both remove them from the adjacent cells and begin the whole table with code like {| class="wikitable" style="border: none;".

Note that replacing {| class="wikitable" with

{{in5}}{| style="border-collapse: collapse;"

has the effect of removing all cell borders that would otherwise appear by default around every cell in the table.

With this change, you must {{em|insert}} a {{em|single}} cell border between two adjacent cells rather than remove {{em|two}} cell borders.

See {{tl|Table cell templates}} for a large set of templates to configure text and color in cells in a standard way, producing stock output. For example: "Yes" ({{Tlx|Yes}}), "No" ({{Tlx|No}}), "—" ({{Tlx|N/A}}), "N/A" ({{Tlx|N/A|N/A}}), "?" ({{Tlx|dunno}}), on colored backgrounds.

For example, see Comparison of text editors, which makes frequent use of table cell templates.

A horizontal scrollbar for the whole page shows up for any wikitable that is too wide for the screen. To create a scrollbar just for the table the following code may be used. Place the following code above a wikitable initialization:

This will prevent the table from causing the entire page to scroll when scrolling through the table horizontally.

Cell borders can be hidden by adding {{xt|border: none; background: none;}} to the style attributes of either the table or the cell,Applying background: none to the entire table will, perhaps predictably, subtly alter its color palette. though this may not work in older browsers. Another use case for this is for implementing aligned multi-column tables:

{{em|Note that the removal of the link on an image is dependent on it being purely decorative (as it will be ignored by assistive devices).}}

When cell content that contains a pipe character does not render correctly, simply add an empty format for that cell. The second pipe character in a line of |cell code will not display; it is reserved for adding a format. Wikicode between the first and second pipe is a format, but since emptiness or an error there is ignored, it just disappears. When this happens, add a dummy format. {{Crossref|selfref=no|(For a real format, see {{section link||HTML attributes}}.)}} Use a third pipe character to render your first pipe character.

The third and later pipe characters will render, but to display two adjacent pipe characters in a cell, (instead of having them act as the first pipe at the start of a new cell), other pipe-rendering options are needed. Instead of using a dummy format to render a pipe, you can render it directly by 1) {{tag|nowiki|content={{!}}}} (preferred) or 2) html: | or |. Each line of cell code in the following table has one wikicode pipe.

Template {{tl2|!}}, because of the order in which things are parsed, is equivalent to typing in a single | pipe character. The single <nowiki />| parser-tag does not apply here. See how they do not escape the second pipe, as &#124 and {{tag|nowiki|content={{!}}}} did above:

There are several other CSS classes, besides the basic class=wikitable, documented § above.

In the first line of table code, after the