TablePress

Description

TablePress is the most popular and highest rated WordPress table plugin. It allows you to easily create and manage beautiful tables on your website. You can embed the tables into posts, pages, or other site areas using a block in the block editor. Table data can be edited in a spreadsheet-like interface, without any coding. Tables can contain any type of data, even math formulas that will be evaluated. Additional features like sorting, pagination, and filtering make it easy for site visitors to interact with the table data. Tables can be imported and exported from/to Excel, CSV, HTML, and JSON files.

Even more great features for you and your site’s visitors and priority email support are available with a Premium license plan of TablePress. Go check them out!

More information

Visit the plugin website at tablepress.org for more information, take a look at example tables, or check out TablePress on a free test site. For latest news, follow @TablePress on Twitter.

Usage

After installing the plugin, you can create and manage tables on the “TablePress” screen in the WordPress Dashboard.

To insert a table into a post or page, add a “TablePress table” block in the block editor and select the desired table.

Examples for common styling changes via “Custom CSS” code can be found on the TablePress FAQ page.
You may also add certain features (like sorting, pagination, filtering, alternating row colors, row highlighting, print name and/or description, …) by enabling the corresponding checkboxes on a table’s “Edit” screen.

Even more great features for you and your site’s visitors and priority email support are available with a Premium license plan of TablePress. Go check them out!

License

This plugin is Free Software, released and licensed under the GPL, version 2. You may use it free of charge for any purpose.

Screenshots

  • "All Tables" screen
  • "Edit" screen
  • "Add new Table" screen
  • "Import" screen
  • "Export" screen
  • "Plugin Options" screen
  • "About" screen
  • The “TablePress table” block in the block editor
  • An example table (as it can be seen on the TablePress website)

Blocks

This plugin provides 1 block.

  • TablePress table Embed a TablePress table.

Installation

The easiest way to install TablePress is via your WordPress Dashboard:

  1. Go to the “Plugins” screen, click “Add New”, and search for “TablePress” in the WordPress Plugin Directory.
  2. Click “Install Now” and after that’s complete, click “Activate”.
  3. Create and manage tables by going to the “TablePress” screen in the admin menu.
  4. To insert a table into a post or page, add a “TablePress table” block in the block editor and select the desired table.
  5. You can change the table styling by using CSS code, which can be entered into the “Custom CSS” textarea on the “Plugin Options” screen.

Manual installation works just as for other WordPress plugins:

  1. Download and extract the ZIP file.
  2. Move the folder “tablepress” to the “wp-content/plugins/” directory of your WordPress installation, e.g. via FTP.
  3. Activate the plugin “TablePress” on the “Plugins” screen of your WordPress Dashboard.
  4. Create and manage tables by going to the “TablePress” screen in the admin menu.
  5. To insert a table into a post or page, add a “TablePress table” block in the block editor and select the desired table.
  6. You can change the table styling by using CSS code, which can be entered into the “Custom CSS” textarea on the “Plugin Options” screen.

FAQ

Where can I find answers to Frequently Asked Questions?

Many questions, regarding different features or styling, have been answered on the FAQ page on the plugin website.

Support?

Premium Support

Users with a valid TablePress Premium license plan are eligible for Priority Email Support, directly from the plugin developer! Find out more!

Community Support for users of the Free version

For support questions, bug reports, or feature requests, please use the WordPress Support Forums. Please search through the forums first, and only create a new topic if you don’t find an existing answer. Thank you!

Requirements?

In short: WordPress 5.8 or higher, while the latest version of WordPress is always recommended.

Languages and Localization?

TablePress uses the “Translate WordPress” platform. Please see the sidebar on the TablePress page in the WordPress Plugin Directory for available translations.

To make TablePress available in your language, go to the TablePress translations page, log in with a free wordpress.org account and start translating.

Development

You can follow the development of TablePress more closely in its official GitHub repository.

Where can I get more information?

Visit the plugin website at tablepress.org for the latest information on TablePress or follow @TablePress on Twitter.

Reviews

March 14, 2023
This produces very nice looking and flexible tables. Also has a super responsive and helpful support, even for free users.
March 5, 2023
We've been using Table Press for many years on two simple websites, it's easy to use and simple to manage. The very few time I needed support, it came quickly and accurately.
March 1, 2023 5 replies
I seriously don't understand the hype for this plugin. There are no functionalities at all and the horizontal scrolling breaks the table formatting which the author does not bother to fix and pushes users to buy the premium plans in order to get responsive tables. Everything else needs to be done using CSS like the most basic background coloring and border lines. What's worse is that the CSS that is implemented in this plugin is unconventional. If you spend time learning to write CSS for this plugin, you are wasting your time because the naming convention cannot be transferred anywhere else. You still need to learn conventional CSS naming conventions in order to use your CSS codes elsewhere, including other Table plugins.For example to target the first column of your table, conventional CSS is written as:.yourtable td:first-child {Your styling}But for TablePress, you need to write CSS like this:.tablepress.yourtable .column-1 {Your styling}For non-programmers, It may look like it's simplifying your CSS naming convention but it is very confusing when you want to use conventional CSS from forums like stackoverflow to do something that is not in the TablePress documentation, which is very sparse. The documentation is so sparse that you might as well read articles written by 3rd parties on Tablepress. At least they teach you most of the basic CSS functions for Tablepress.Responsiveness is the most important aspect in today's software design. Yet, horizontal scrolling is broken. I'm fine with locking vertical stacking responsiveness behind premium plans but the basic horizontal scrolling is not working and I need to use custom HTML and CSS just to make it work. If I need to use so much CSS to style and add functions to my tables, I might as well just use custom HTML block to create the table and style it myself. Why the need for TablePress?Horizontal Scrolling is only one aspect that is lacking. There are so many other missing functionalities that it boggles my mind that reviewers and users review this plugin favorably.Let's just compare TablePress and WP Table Builder FREE Version:TablePress Settings:1) Custom CSS2) Admin Menu EntryWP Table Builder Settings:1) Allowed User Roles2) Custom CSS3) Lazy Load Images4) Version Control (Install the version you want)5) Table Fixer (Your tables might get corrupted by your browser addons. If you have any table with unexpected behaviour (cell edit disabled, etc) use this tool.) List of Table Configurations that TablePress are MISSING but available on WP Table Builder built-in functions:1) Insert Buttons, List, Star Rating, Custom HTML, Shortcode2) Background Colors for Headers and Even/Odd Rows3) Table Management (Padding, Table Alignment, Table Container Max Width, Table Container Min Auto Width)4) Table Border (Border Width/Color, Inner Border Width/Color, Inner Header Border)5) Horizontal Scrolling that does not break the table formatting (TablePress horizontal scrolling breaks table formatting.)6) Table Tags7) Table Role8) Disable Table StylesList of Table Configurations that TablePress has but WP Table Builder is missing:1) Search/Filtering2) Pagination3) Custom JS Just look at the differences in functionalities between the 2 plugins in the FREE version! Furthermore, WP Table Builder is much cheaper with $49/year plan to include vertical stacking responsiveness, search, pagination and more. Whereas TablePress requires $79/year just to have those functions given for free for WP Table Builder. Not to mention that WP Table Builder has a lifetime plan. In fact, not only WP Table Builder has better functionalities than TablePress. Even Ninja Table is much better. It gives as many functions as WP Table Builder for free so making it another plugin that trumps TablePress soundly. The premium plan is also very competitively priced at $55/year, which is again much cheaper than TablePress.I am not affiliated with WP Table Builder nor Ninja Table. I'm just confounded by the lack of functionalities of TablePress that has so many users and got such good reviews online. Maybe there are web developers who do not need the functionalities of WP Table Builder and Ninja Table but in that case, why do they even need to install TablePress. They can just use custom HTML block and CSS style the tables themselves and can also easily get responsiveness of the tables the way they want it. The purpose of plugins is to make it easy for us non-programmers to set up a decent looking website and also to make life easier for web developers who want to save time from coding everything from scratch. So, I really fail to see how this plugin is getting all the glowing reviews.Maybe this plugin was developed much earlier than the others so it had a head-start in getting users. But obviously in 2023, it has lagged behind competitors and by putting functionalities that other plugins are giving for free behind premium plans at a much higher price, it really does not deserve the amount of praise and mentions. My final advice for non-programmer users: STAY AWAY from this plugin! Other table plugins have much more functionalities like the ones I mentioned above and they make your life much easier without having to fiddle with unconventional CSS implemented by this plugin.
February 22, 2023
This plugin is really powerful. I tried them all and found my home. Thank you to the creator for building up such polished and easy to use plugin. I bought the pro version and recommend it to anyone.
Read all 4,452 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“TablePress” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“TablePress” has been translated into 41 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “TablePress” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

Recent changes are shown below. For earlier changes, please see the changelog history.

Version 2.0.4

TablePress 2.0.4 fixes a few bugs and brings some nice enhancements. For more information on changes and new features in TablePress 2.x, please see below.

  • The “Table” button for users that don’t use the WordPress block editor is back!
  • Issues that some users had with saving changes on the “Edit” screen are fixed.
  • No errors should be thrown anymore when required PHP extensions are missing on a server when importing files.
  • Visual glitches in the Horizontal Scrolling, caused by themes adding conflicting CSS, are reduced.
  • The “Automatic Filtering” feature now allows retrieving the filter term from a URL parameter. (TablePress Pro and Max only.)
  • A backwards compatibility improvement was added to the “Individual Column Filtering” feature. (TablePress Pro and Max only.)
  • The “Server-side Processing” feature now uses much shorter request URL which improves performance and prevents possible server errors. (TablePress Max only.)
  • Some internal documentation and build tools were updated.

TablePress 2.0.3 contains these changes:

  • The “Edit” screen now has context menu entries and supports Ctrl/Cmd + Alt/option + Shift + ↑/↓/←/→ keyboard shortcuts for moving the currently selected rows to the top or bottom, or the currently selected columns to the left or right edge.
  • On the “Edit” screen, it’s now easier to drag and drop rows and columns with the mouse, as the clickable regions are now bigger.
  • On the “Edit” screen, the cell height was reduced, so that more content fits on the screen.
  • The “Edit” screen now properly supports copying and pasting of content that contains quotation marks.
  • The “Show Shortcode” link on the “All tables” screen, often used for copy and paste, is back!
  • The automatic format detection of the file import is more robust, especially when importing CSV files.
  • TablePress better protects itself against conflicts caused by other plugins that use outdated versions of the Composer tool.
  • An error where tables could not be saved was fixed. (TablePress Pro and Max only.)
  • The Column Filter Dropdowns module now properly deals with & characters and HTML code in cells, and applies better sorting to the selectable options. (TablePress Pro and Max only.)

TablePress 2.0.2 contains these changes:

  • The “Edit” screen now supports Ctrl/Cmd + L/I/E keyboard shortcuts for the “Insert Link”, “Insert Image”, and “Advanced Editor” buttons, respectively.
  • The “Edit” screen now supports Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + ↑/↓/←/→ keyboard shortcuts for moving the currently selected rows up or down, or the currently selected columns left or right.
  • An error where tables could not be saved was fixed. (TablePress Pro and Max only.)
  • The Fixed Columns module now properly shows multiple fixed columns. (TablePress Pro and Max only.)
  • The integration of the Automatic Periodic Table Import module was fixed. (TablePress Max only.)

TablePress 2.0.1 contains these changes:

  • TablePress will again work correctly when it’s “network activated” on WordPress Multisite installations.
  • Issues that some users had with saving changes on the “Edit” screen are fixed.
  • The misalignment between head and body rows when using “Horizontal Scrolling” is fixed.
  • The vertical alignment of elements in table cells is back to its old behavior, due to issues in some themes.
  • No errors should be thrown anymore when the “Table Features for Site Visitors” are active for tables that have combined cells or no head row.
  • The “Shortcode” text field, often used for copy and paste, on the “Edit” screen is back!
  • More valuable information about errors is given when a table import fails.
  • An issue with the sorting arrow icons showing as weird characters is fixed.
  • No errors should be thrown anymore when required PHP extensions are missing on a server when evaluating math formulas.

Besides a fresh and modern look of the TablePress screens, here are the highlights of TablePress 2.0:

Completely new “Edit” screen for tables

  • TablePress now has an even more spreadsheet-like user interface that makes working with large tables a breeze.
  • Editing will be much faster: A right-click context menu allows for quick access to the table manipulation tools.
  • A keyboard shortcut for saving changes will save a lot of scrolling.

Block editor support instead of having to deal with Shortcodes

  • The new “TablePress table” block will give you a preview of the table when inserting it into a post or page, for a more intuitive embedding of tables. You won’t even have to remember the table ID, as a table search is included.
  • And if you want, converting existing Shortcodes is just two clicks away.

Easier styling of tables with CSS variables

  • You can now use CSS variables instead of complex CSS selectors for quicker and easier styling changes, in particular of table colors.
  • The CSS selectors in the default CSS have been simplified for higher compatibility with more themes.

Importing tables is easier and more powerful than ever

  • Simply drag&drop files to import them — even multiple files at once, even of different formats!
  • No more need to choose the import file format: The auto detection will know if it’s a CSV, Excel, HTML, or JSON file.
  • In addition, more file formats are recognized, like the LibreOffice ODS format.
  • The Excel import is much more powerful: For example, clickable links and simple styling will be recognized and imported!
  • The Replace/Append select box also has a live-search with autocomplete now, making finding the right table much faster.

New formula calculation engine

  • TablePress now understands many more formulas, just as you know them from Excel!
  • The formulas even support text strings now, which enables many new ways of automatically creating table content.
  • When exporting tables, potentially dangerous formulas will be escaped, to increase protection against CSV injection attacks.

Premium versions

  • Even more great features for you and your site’s visitors and priority email support are available with a Premium license plan of TablePress. Go check them out!

Behind the scenes

  • Cleaned up and simplified code, for easier future maintenance, to follow WordPress Coding Standards, and to offer helpful inline documentation.
  • Updated external libraries to benefit from enhancements and bug fixes.
  • Automated code compatibility checks and build tools simplify chores for easier development.
  • Support for PHP 8.1 and PHP 8.2.
  • TablePress 2.0 requires WordPress 5.8.