Help:Table

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Help:Table

Tables can be used to layout contents horizontally and vertically. Tables can be made sortable, columns may be aligned, cells may be combined. See the following examples.

For basic usage see Help:Editing#Tables.

Some Examples

Table layout without border lines

Layout contents vertically and horizontally (without making obvious that you use tables for this). Using the exclamation mark (!) instead of the pipe symbol (|) center-aligns the cell text and sets it to bold face.

{| 
|-
! A
! B
|-
| 1
| 2
|-
| x
| xx
|}

A	B
1	2
x	xx

Standard wiki table layout

A table with obvious heading style and decent lines to optically separate cells. You get this by adding class="wikitable" to the first line of the table.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! A
! B
|-
| 1
| 2
|-
| x
| xx
|}

A	B
1	2
x	xx

Heading style for left and top cells

Sometimes it's helpful to place the legend on the left side.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! ??
! 1
! 2
|-
! A
| a1
| a2
|-
! B
| b1
| b2
|}

??	1	2
A	a1	a2
B	b1	b2

Sortable tables

Tables can be sorted automatically by adding the sortable class. If you wish to disable sorting for a column (typically description or comments) add class="unsortable" to the column heading.

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Steps per Octave !! Step Size 
! class="unsortable" | comments
|-
| 15 || 80 || This is nice
|-
| 24 || 50 || Peppermint
|-
| 12 || 100 || Try this for free
|-
| 6  || 200 || Debussy loves it.
|}

Steps per Octave	Step Size	comments
15	80	This is nice
24	50	Peppermint
12	100	Try this for free
6	200	Debussy loves it.

Special needs

Table title or description

As to add a description or title to your table, use the pipe-plus combination |+ at the beginning of the line. For better readability, you may add optional row separators (|-) around this line.

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Title or description
|-
! Heading A
! Heading B
|-
| Cell 1
| Cell 2
|-
| Cell 3
| Cell 4
|}

Title or description

Heading A	Heading B
Cell 1	Cell 2
Cell 3	Cell 4

Adjusting text alignment

If you want to override the default text alignment for all cells, add the class "center-all" to the class="wikitable" statement at beginning of the table.

For whole columns

Add a the appropriate class(es) to the class="wikitable" statement at beginning of the table. Their name starts with the alignment specification (left, center, or right) and a number (1 to 12) after a minus sign (-).

To make the first column left-aligned, the second center-aligned, and the third right-aligned, add the classes "left-1", "center-2", and "right-3" to the "wikitable" class, separated by spaces:

{| class="wikitable left-1 center-2 right-3"
|-
! Left-aligned
! Center-aligned
! Right-aligned
|-
| Word
| 3/2
| 0.234
|-
| More words
| 129/128
| 123.456
|}

Left-aligned	Center-aligned	Right-aligned
Word	3/2	0.234
More words	129/128	123.456

If you want to override the default text alignment (which is left) for the whole table, use "center-all" or "right-all".

For single cells

The table cells are left aligned by default, the heading cells are center aligned. You may change this via inline CSS style definitions:

What you want for the cell	What you do to get it
Left aligned text	Nothing to do (if the default is "left-align", this is mostly the case)
Centered text	Place style="text-align: center;" | after the opening pipe
Right aligned	Place style="text-align: right;" | after the opening pipe
Headline style	Exclamation mark instead of the pipe symbol starts the cell

Pipe symbols in cells

The pipe character is an important meta char to MediaWiki. Especially in tables, where each cell can be decorated with its own class and style specification, it is hard to get the pipe character displayed for what it is. Wikipedia's help page has some suggestions for coping with this issue. However, adding another pipe right after the initial pipe(s) also works:

Compact syntax: one line per row

Wikitext	Rendered output
{| class="wikitable" |- !| A|X !!| B|Y |- || 1|2 ||| 3|4 |}	A|X B|Y 1|2 3|4

"Airy" syntax: one line per cell

Wikitext	Rendered output
{| class="wikitable" |- !| A|X !| B|Y |- || 1|2 || 3|4 |}	A|X B|Y 1|2 3|4

Alternatively, pipe characters can be escaped using {{!}} or {{pipe}}:

Using escapes

Wikitext	Rendered output
{| class="wikitable" |- ! A{{pipe}}X ! B{{pipe}}Y |- | 1{{pipe}}2 | 3{{pipe}}4 |}	A|X B|Y 1|2 3|4

Combining table cells

todo: internal description of colspans and rowspans

External helper tools

If you have to construct really complex tables with colspans and rowspans, you may use this online table generator:

Generate tables in MediaWiki format - TablesGenerator.com

For example, this wiki markup:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! colspan="3" | 1
! 2
! 3
|-
| rowspan="2" | A
| colspan="3" | B
| C
|-
| rowspan="2" colspan="2" | D
| colspan="2" | E
|-
| F
| G
| H
|}

will be rendered into this table:

1			2	3
A	B			C
	D		E
F			G	H

See also

• Help:Help
• Help:Editing