Creating Tables With 5 Free Plugins in WordPress

You can enhance the TablePress plugin with premium extensions. TablePress Extensions are like regular WordPress plugins, which you install in the same way. Although these are available to download for free, the developer asks for donations to support these.Here are a few examples of the premium extensions:

• Responsive Tables – Adjusts the tables, so they fit all screen sizes
• Row Filtering – Allows you to display only items with a particular keyword in a column
• Table Row Order – Lets you display the rows in random, reversed, or sorted order each time

Features

• It is easily searchable.
• Data entry through this plugin is simple & straightforward.
• It gives easy pagination.
• You can also copy/duplicate and delete tables.
• It provides easy import/export options from/to Excel, CSV, HTML, and JSON files.

Pros

• It provides the facility to attach custom CSS.
• Can show table anywhere in a theme by using template tag.
• Any data type can be used such as Text, numbers, images, links, even HTML or JavaScript.
• It has multilingual support.

Cons

• Table editing is a little slow and time-consuming.
• It gives limited customizability.
• It’s not responsive in nature.

Price:

• Free plus Donations for the premium extensions

2. Ultimate Tables

Ultimate Tables is a free plugin to create and manage tables in WordPress. You can insert tables into pages, posts or articles. Even, multiple tables can be inserted at once. This is a good plugin with 4-star rating unless you need to mess with large data. The main features of this plugin are as follows

Features

• It allows you to edit the number of rows and columns, reorder and delete an existing table.
• Text or HTML code both can be inserted into the cells.
• Offers 3 different designs.
• Facilitates a search option.
• Two types of orders are possible: Alphabetical and Numerical.
• Provides information on a number of rows and items.
• Offers pagination.

Pros

• This page is continually updated.
• It gives configurable height & width options.

Cons

• Provides limited customization.
• Lacks in import/export capability.
• Limited support for large data.
• Generates tables that are not responsive.

3. Magic Liquidizer Responsive Table

Magic Liquidizer Responsive Table plugin transforms the simple HTML tables into mobile responsive tables. It is an easy solution to sync the tables on small screens where normally data overlaps. Also, collapses the columns into rows and ensures the elegant view of data and provides many advanced features for SEO, navigation and custom media queries in the premium version. It works as a great WordPress responsive table plugin and its basic version is free. Some of its main features are as follows

Features

• Responsive web design solution for images, texts, forms, tables, navigation menu.
• Provides responsive HTML layouts.
• Support for landscape and portrait view.
• Provides 100% fluidity.

Pros

• Simple and lightweight.
• Cross-browser compatibility.
• Tablet friendly.

Cons

• Some users have reported that it breaks the WordPress audio on mobile. However, works well on a desktop.
• It has issues if you put video links on the table.

4. Data Tables Generator by Supsysti

Data Tables generator is a free WordPress table plugin that generates responsive tables. It effectively manages the tables from admin panel. It provides interactive charts and graphs, sorting, pagination, filtering etc. With constant 5-star rating, it’s a WordPress responsive table plugin. It has many features, out of which some key features are as follows

Features

• It provides easy searching options.
• It has formulas support and HTML tables support for data cells.
• You can enable table Caption, Header, Footer.
• It provides many customization options like Bold” and “Italic” font style, change color option for cells and fonts.
• You can import Tables from CSV, Excel, Google Sheets.
• You can also export tables to CSV, Excel, PDF.

Pros

• Produces SEO friendly data tables.
• Creates responsive tables.
• Includes an option for the auto-update from Google Sheets.

Cons

• Limited support for large tables.

 

5. JTRT Responsive Tables

JTRT responsive Tables plugin for WordPress results in amazing responsive tables without any HTML code or CSS. An average user can use it easily. It allows you to convert your excel CSV files to responsive HTML with a few clicks. It has many features, out of which some main are as follows

Features

• You can edit table cells from the backend.
• It is now easy to add links/images to your table.
• You can add custom breakpoints for each table.
• It facilitates many new features like table sorting, table pagination, and table filtering.
• You can set a hover highlight color for rows/columns.

Pros

• It has Simple WYSIWYG backend table editor.
• It provides 5 Custom responsive breakpoint sizes.
• It has a support for multiple tables on a single page.

Cons

• It needs some improvements in Save option. Users have reported issues regarding this.

Bonus WordPress Table Plugins

There are some important WordPress Table plugins that will work as great add-ons when used with other WordPress Table plugins. Basically, they add special extra functionality to the plugins. Here, I have listed 2 such bonus plugins as follows

1. TableSorter

TableSorter is a good WordPress plugin to sort HTML tables without any page refresh. It is an easy to use WordPress table plugin. You can select a table template from many available choices. The key features of TableSorter plugin are as follows

Features

• It provides Multi-column sorting.
• You can easily disable sorting from particular columns.
• It can sort multiple columns simultaneously.
• It offers many styling options like background color, font color, alignment, text width etc.

2. ACF: TablePress

This WordPress table plugin will be used as an extension with TablePress mainly. It provides a drop-down menu that lets you select from a list of available tables. It creates a custom field to return the table ID for the table selected, or the full HTML of the table. It requires ACF version 4+ or 5+ and TablePress 1.5+.

Features

• It enables a seamless integration into the UI of your custom post types.
• It is handy to print tables via ACF.

How to Add a Table in WordPress Using TablePress Plugin?

Now, when you have all the Top WordPress table plugins for your exposure, what else you need? You will simply add a table through the plugin. Though the procedure of adding a table through plugin is very simple, I am going to showcase the steps to create the table through TablePress. The procedure will remain same only with a slight self-explanatory variation with other table plugins. These steps are as follows

STEP 1:  Once installed & activated, you can see the table in the Dashboard menu.

STEP 2: From the Dashboard, Go to TablePress → Add New.

STEP 3: You can see a page asking for table particulars. Fill table name, description, number of rows & columns you require. Click Add Table as shown below

STEP 4: Now, a table ID or shortcode is generated, that you can use on the page at which you want to display the table. You can add table content here.

Once, you are done with the content, specify the setting through table options. Like you want the first row as the header or not, how many table rows per page, alternate table row coloring etc.

Now press Save Changes button.

STEP 5: Now, switch to the page where you want this table. Paste the shortcode of table and update.

STEP 6: The resultant table will look somewhat like this on the live page.

It’s so easy. You are done!!

Conclusion

Creating your tables in WordPress is a breeze when you use one of these plugins.

Each one offers a simple interface to load data from your existing source. More importantly, all of these plugins are mobile responsive, so your data will look good on all screen sizes.

Which one will you choose to create your tables?