Help talk:Table

Help talk:Table/Archive 1 (13 April 2006 – 10 March 2007)

wikitable sortable

Where can I go to make a suggestion for wikitable sortable? I think it could be quite usefull for lists of titles (films, novels, etc.), but I was wondering if it's possible to have it ignore the words "the", "a", and so on at the beginning of the title, as is commonly done when sorting films alphabetically. Esn 07:33, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

You can do it ugly style with <span style="display:none">what_you_want_it_sorted_by</span>what_shows_up. I did a little test run incorporated into a template at User:Peregrine Fisher/Workspace/ActingFilmography-tv, with the result being the first tabel at User:Peregrine Fisher/Workspace/Testpage. - Peregrine Fisher 08:11, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorta Broken?

class="sortable wikitable" worked well when I set up the table Nilgiris_(mountains)#List_of_peaks_in_the_Nilgiri_Hills and others I learned from by example, but now they only sort the first column. Has something changed or did I just make an error? Any sortable wikitable guru please help!Marcus 19:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I made changes which removes the empty fifth column, and makes all remaining four columns sortable. There are other issues with empty fields and how context is lost after sorting, so look it over carefully—a revert might be in order. —EncMstr 20:26, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Multiple tables in one row

I have a table that's rather long and narrow (only two columns). I'd like to split it in two parts and display them side by side, so instead of one table that's a page long and big empty space next to it I have two shorter tables running in parallel. What's the best way to do this? --Itinerant1 19:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Wiki markup Table

What the hell has happened to the Wiki markup type table. Has the formatting changed ? It looks awful and was much better the way it was before. 195.137.109.177 10:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Where is help for class="wikitable"?

Hi. This page is obviously rather out of date, considering that all over the wikipedia nearly all tables in heavily-maintained pages have been updated to make use of class="wikitable." But for those of us who don't really know much about CSS, where on earth is the basic page for class="wikitable" styles? Doops | talk 08:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, where, please ? i's been searching too. Yes, like the doc for things such as style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-size: smaller; table-layout: fixed;" (pls don't reply that they are self-explanatory) --Jerome Potts (talk) 21:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Make line thicker

Is it possible for one column line to be darker? Epson291 05:52, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Floating tables good or bad??

The page says

Do not, under any circumstances, use "float" to position a table.
It will break page rendering at large font sizes.

Yet one paragraph below, it is explained how to produce a floating table. I think either the negative advise or the how-to should be removed Jasy jatere 23:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's the way all infoboxes are created, and yes, the infoboxes do cause problems when the ratio font size / window width gets large. This really has to be solved. I think a good solution would be to turn floating tables into normal full width tables when they get larger than say half of the window width. Shinobu 04:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Bad Link in this Page

The "Mediawiki edit toolbar" link found in the "Using the Toolbar" section (copy of which is quoted below) only links to a "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name." but the link is a "blue" link. I thought links to non-existent pages were "red"

Using the Toolbar

You can use the Mediawiki edit toolbar to create tables.The toolbar is helpful to generate the necessary codings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dbiel (talk • contribs) 12:44, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Two tables

side by side

How can you put two narrow tables side by side? --Mika1h 11:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Method 1: float the tables left and right

Method 2: place both tables into another table with one row and two columns.

I expect Method 2 will yield better results in more browsers and variety of screen widths. —EncMstr 15:06, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

underneath each other

And how can I put two tables (at the beginning of an article) underneath each other? My tables always end up, being side by side, and only after enough text has been added, the second table kinda slides underneath the first one. The text will float to the left of the tables, as desired. Thanks. - Mactie 13:38, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

You can use {{clear}} between the tables. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Filtering?

Is it possible to filter a table so that it only shows rows where one column = X (X could be set by a link, dropdown menu, or radio buttons)? I would like to have a large table and be able to see only sections of it at a time, based on a specific field. The functionality would be similar to the AutoFilter feature that is in Microsoft Excel. --Scott Alter 00:35, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

If this currently does not exist, may I request it as a new feature. Here are examples of filters in use on webpages: http://www.viala.hu/frdl/tablesort/tablesort.html http://leparlement.org/filterTable --Scott Alter 02:26, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Links

The links to "header," "row" and "cell" under the wiki toolbar section all lead to disambiguation pages. Could someone familiar with this page find the appropriate articles? Thanks. Awadewit | talk 20:52, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Table footnotes --- HOW TO ???

Have tried to use html code of <footnotes> </footnotes> for a table on the page of Eagles and it doesn't work. I have also tried another alternative of caption code and it gave an appearance which is yuki. Wiki admin, please help to provide me a good visual example here somewhere — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.64.49.173 (talk • contribs) 08:45, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Help with table creation

Would someone here be willing to help me with table creation for my user page. I don't think it will be difficult for someone that knows what they are doing and i'm not sure where else to ask. Jmfangio ► Talk 21:01, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Classes

Is there a list of classes such as wikitable, sortable, infobox and the like? --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, is there, please? --Jerome Potts (talk) 21:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Archive?

This page is getting a bit long. Users with slow internet connections are having to wait a long time to load the entire page. I feel that it is a good time to archive this page? Any comments about this are welcomed. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 05:18, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

wouldn't it be nice if could be archived just the sections where the discussion is closed/settled? --Jerome Potts (talk) 21:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Macs

I use a Mac and when I try to sort a table that can be sorted, such as the one about cities and temperatures on the sorting page on metawiki, no matter which column I want to sort the information by, it is always sorted by the city's name (I think generally it will sort the table according to the first column). Are there any settings I can change to correct this? asyndeton 19:22, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Indent within table cell?

I'd like to indent within a table cell without a bullet. How can it be done? WriterHound 03:16, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's one way to do it. Unfortunately, the wikimarkup is rather ugly.

column 1	column 2
11 no indent	12 no indent
21 indented 1	22 no indent
31 indented 2	32 no indent
41 indented 3	42 indented 1

—EncMstr 14:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

You could also use non-breaking spaces (&nbsp;) for smaller indents. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 15:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Help request: Table moves to bottom of page

Hi, Please take a look at the table on this page. In the markup of the page the table directly follows the heading ==Userboxes==. However, when the page is rendered as you will notice the table shows up at the bottom of the page below all other text. I can't figure out what causes this. Any suggestions are welcome. ʍαμ$ʏ5043 17:39, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

You closed your table with |-} where it should have been |}. You can also use {{Userboxtop}} and {{Userboxbottom}} to group your userboxes. See User:Gadget850/about for a sample. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 18:15, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for helping out. Much appreciated. ʍαμ$ʏ5043 09:31, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Problem with floating wikitables

Observe this wikitable:

さくら
怪獣
じゃない
もん！

さくら
怪獣
じゃない
もん！

If we try to float it to the right something ugly happens.

Lorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci uelit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quærat uoluptatem. Vt enim ad minima ueniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem uel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea uoluptate uelit esse, quam nihil molestiæ consequatur, uel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo uoluptas nulla pariatur? At uero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis præsentium uoluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcæcati cupiditate non prouident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum.

さくら
怪獣
じゃない
もん！

Floating it on the left works better.

Lorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci uelit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quærat uoluptatem. Vt enim ad minima ueniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem uel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea uoluptate uelit esse, quam nihil molestiæ consequatur, uel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo uoluptas nulla pariatur? At uero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis præsentium uoluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcæcati cupiditate non prouident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum.

さくら
怪獣
じゃない
もん！

How it probably should look, emulated by adding CSS.

Lorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci uelit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quærat uoluptatem. Vt enim ad minima ueniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem uel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea uoluptate uelit esse, quam nihil molestiæ consequatur, uel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo uoluptas nulla pariatur? At uero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis præsentium uoluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcæcati cupiditate non prouident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum.

さくら
怪獣
じゃない
もん！

On the left.

Lorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci uelit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quærat uoluptatem. Vt enim ad minima ueniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem uel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea uoluptate uelit esse, quam nihil molestiæ consequatur, uel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo uoluptas nulla pariatur? At uero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis præsentium uoluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcæcati cupiditate non prouident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum.

I thought the whole point of using CSS classes was not to have to use inline CSS. Shouldn't there be CSS classes for left/right floating tables that contain all the proper CSS? Shinobu 17:50, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, there should be. However, this is a wikipedia-wide problem which is apparent with infoboxes and images as well. I'll pass it on to the keepers of the site-wide CSS. Thanks. —EncMstr 21:25, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Ack! I couldn't find an example article demonstrating any problems. It seems to be fixed. If you do run across it, mention it on MediaWiki talk:Common.js. —EncMstr 16:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

@It seems to be fixed.: O RLY? Then what are the CSS classes to use? Then I can fix Color Graphics Adapter without using inline CSS. Shinobu 14:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks okay, though two of the tables Full CGA 16-color palette and Dark Yellow get the text pretty close (but not touching or overlapping) at various window widths. What do you see? (Maybe you could upload a screen shot?) —EncMstr 15:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

See Image:Floating-Wikipedia-tables.png. The same problem occurs on the CGA article as well. It also occurs consistently across all browsers I have: Safari (screenshot), Konqueror, IE and Firefox, regardless of fontsize, and window width. This is why CSS class "wikitable" by itself cannot be used for floating tables, because it lookes hideous. Fixing it would currently necessitate the use of inline CSS, which is to be abhorred. Shinobu 03:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

(Thanks for prompting.) Yep, that's the same thing I see. The text isn't obscured, but it is "distracted" by being so close to the image. Odd that your text doesn't fill in under the image. I'm seeing it do that (correctly) with SeaMonkey and FireFox, though at some browser widths, bits of it "touch" the image. Would you be willing to mention it on MediaWiki talk:Common.css? —EncMstr 14:49, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I'll try to describe the problem as clearly as possible. If I fail at doing so I encourage you to comment on it there. Shinobu 11:35, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This discussion is continued at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. Shinobu 11:35, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Table within a table

Could anyone help - I have created 3 tables on this page here Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal, but to tidy things up I would very much like to put those 3 tables into 1 big table, with each arm of the canal forming a column, and underneath each arm column, would be the 2 columns for location and coordinates. Sorry if that doesn't make any sense! Parrot of Doom 11:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I took a stab at it using {{Col-begin}}. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 12:58, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Super smashing great :) Thanks Parrot of Doom 13:42, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Column background

Does anyone know how to get a column with a background colour without having to add the |style="background:#FAF17F"| text on each individual row? I'm trying to do it on this example, with the yellow, red and green colours going all the way down to the bottom. glennb28 t • c 18:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there exists any convenient way, short of using an editor to do the repetitive work for you. The html editors don't know of any way to optimize it. (The wikitable syntax is closely related to the html table markup.) —EncMstr 06:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Except that HTML has the colgroup and col tags, which very conveniently allow markup such as this to be specified. The real WTF is that MediaWiki's sanatizer filters these tags, treating them as if surrounded by a <nowiki>. Shinobu 04:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Table parameters

I know about the "wikitable" and "sortable" parameters, but are there others? Where do I find the list if there are? In particular, can I set a table to "hideable"? How about a single column? Arthurrh 16:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I asked above and still haven't received an answer. I just found Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes or WP:CLASS. It looks like these are table classes:

• wikitable
• sortable
• infobox
• navbox
• prettytable (obsoleted by wikitable)
• collapsible
• collapsed
• autocollapse
• toccolours
• messagebox
• standard-talk

I may have missed or added some by mistake. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I saw those classes. I'd really like to have hideable tables and columns. Maybe I'll just try the obvious and put the word "hideable" and see what happens. ;-) Arthurrh 18:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I think collapsible is the ticket. Arthurrh 18:18, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Help With Right Floating Table

I'm trying to float a table on the right side of the body text of the article Juice Plus and can't seem to get it right. The table looks OK but when the code is dropped in at the beginning of the article, all of the article's text appears in the table -- I am trying to keep it left justified outside the table. Can anyone help? Any general suggestions for making the table look better aesthetically (e.g. borders, colors, etc.) would also be appreciated. Thanks. Rhode Island Red 19:35, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[Note: table code removed; table was taking up a lot of space; those interested can find the corrected table in the (now-)linked article, or look at a prior version of this page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:05, 16 November 2007 (UTC) ]

THIS TEXT SHOULD BE OUTSIDE OF THE TABLE

There were some missing "close table" delimiters. I added three, and removed the break. See if that works better. —EncMstr 20:46, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

You don't need the align=right, that is included in the infobox class. The margin auto was making it center. I would think there wood be a template for this. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 21:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

You rock brother! I had a feeling it was something as simple as that. Much appreciated! Rhode Island Red 21:05, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Automatically split table into X columns

Is there a way to have a table autamatically split into a certain ammount of columns?
I ask because i have a long list of rows (growing regulary) and it's hard to split them into 4 columns by moving the 3 | all the times. --89.61.200.168 16:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit

Instead of include the message: This is a copy of the master help page at Meta. Do not edit this copy. Edits will be lost in the next update from the master page. See below for more information.

It would be a protected page (none can edit it in Wikipedia, but yes in Meta). --Nopetro 08:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Can't get my table quite right

See User:Kotniski/Sandbox. When I use class=wikitable the cellpadding parameter stops working. When I don't use class=wikitable, the borders of merged cells start disappearing. Can anyone help solve at least one of these problems?--Kotniski 11:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC) Update: I managed to solve the second problem (seems you can't leave a cell absolutely empty in that case; have to put a nbsp or something). I still don't understand why wikitable doesn't support cellpadding though (unless I'm doing something wrong).--Kotniski 13:34, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The wikitable class uses CSS styles that will override certain styles. See MediaWiki:Common.css and search for "wikitable" to see the styles. You can use style="empty-cells:show;" to show empty cells by default. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks!--Kotniski 15:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Templates for various tables might be useful

Wikipedia:How to make a table in wikipedia I started this template page, so people could just copy and paste the code to make the tables they want. I personally think a page with table examples and templates to copy and paste is more user friendly than having to read through all the stuff on the current Help:Table page. Though I think there is a need for both pages, because the current help page explains the whole process, so it's more educational for people who want to really understand what they are doing, rather than quickly just creating a table. Further templates could be added to it and/or a standard table/s could appear there to help make wikipedia tables consistent. A vivid dreamer (talk) 04:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Nice idea - will definitely be useful!--Kotniski (talk) 09:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This is a good idea—it took me quite a while to get up to speed on table markup. I was going to note that template {{table}} exists, but you aren't using the term template in the usual Wikipedia context; the more common term here for what you are describing in your article is boilerplate. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Auto-generation of nbsp tags for empty cells

Tables with empty cells are rendered by some browsers without grid lines around empty cells.

This can be unsightly as here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_(data_page)#Properties_of_aqueous_ethanol_solutions

It would be possible, but very tedious, to manually add nbsp tags to all empty cells in the table cited above.

It would be handy if there was the option to tell the wikitable code interpreter to insert nbsp tags automatically at empty cells. -- Ac44ck (talk) 01:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

See Empty cells in HTML tables. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 02:20, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I looked at it. It offers three suggestions:

• Adding nbsp tags manually, which I noted as being tedious.
• Doing something in CSS:

• With which I am not familiar, and
• The link notes that it "works less often than the nbsp hack."

• Inserting some "intentionally empty" marker manually, which would be as tedious as entering nbsp tags manually.

The wikitable interpreter is already turning wiki-markup into HTML tags. Why not make a provision for it generate nbsp tags for empty cells while it is making td and /td tags from the wiki-markup? --Ac44ck (talk) 04:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Use it in the CSS style in the table header: {| border="2" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="font-size:90%; line-height:120%; empty-cells:show;" --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't use CSS. I don't like CSS. I usually browse with it turned off because too many page designers, including Wikipedia, insist on specifying a glaringly bright background for their text.

My _personal_ computer allows me to set the default background colors used by Windows. Web designers are entirely too eager to override my preferred color scheme with their CSS. So I don't usually let them do it.

I would still prefer that the wiki-code interpreter insert nbsp tags for blank cells -- putting borders around empty cells without dictating what colors I "should" be using to view the page.

Here is my attempt to put the suggested CSS code in a context by borrowing an example from the help page (but omitting the 'class' tag):

header 1	header 2	header 3
row 1, col 1		row 1, col 3
row 2, col 1	row 2, col 2	row 2, col 3

Which works _if_ I enable CSS and endure the glaring background color, which I am generally loathe to do.

The nbsp "hack", as it is called in Empty cells in HTML tables, doesn't require the visitor to have CSS enabled:

header 1	header 2	header 3
row 1, col 1		row 1, col 3
row 2, col 1	row 2, col 2	row 2, col 3

Thanks for helping me to implement a partial solution -- for the benefit of those who have CSS enabled and are willing to endure the eye strain caused by the bright background.

Again: The wikitable interpreter is already turning wiki-markup into HTML tags. For it to generate nbsp tags for empty cells while it is making td and /td tags from the wiki-markup still seems preferable to me. --Ac44ck (talk) 20:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Compact rows with pipe syntax?

Hi. I would like to have one row/line using the pipe syntax. Is this possible? For instance, I would like something such as:

{|
|- || row1 col1 || col2 || col3
|- || row2 col1 || col2 || col3
|}

But this doesn't seem to work, and looking at the source (Parser.php), it doesn't look like it is going to. I'm puzzled why there isn't such a syntax, because it seems like it is important for dense tables where you'd like to be able to see to edit them. One solution that works is:

{|
|-
| row1 col1 || col2 || col3<tr>
| row2 col1 || col2 || col3
|}

But I don't really feel comfortable having every line end in a <tr>. Is it reasonable? Against the "rules"? Thanks. jhawkinson (talk) 00:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

---

Separate each row with a |- like this:

{|
|-
| row1 col1 || col2 || col3
|-
| row2 col1 || col2 || col3
|}

This is because you might actually want a line break in the cell text. The |- actually renders as an HTML <tr>, but you should keep the markup clean so other editors can figure out what you are doing. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I understand I can do it with |- on a line by itself. That is what I am trying to avoid! When there is a lot of data, blowing two lines for each row instead of one makes a big difference in readibility. jhawkinson (talk) 01:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Table format problem

Hi! I would need some help in European Patent Convention. The second table, titled "States with an extension agreement with the European Patent Office, with respective date of entry into force" has wider rows than the two others, but the format information is the same... How could I fix that? Thanks for any hint! --Edcolins (talk) 21:15, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I removed the explicit heights from the table headers. Is that what you had in mind? —EncMstr 21:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

If you mean taller rows, then someone just fixed it. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I meant taller. Thanks a lot for your help! That's just great now. --Edcolins (talk) 00:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

no longer working?

On the help page, in the section Help:Tables#Decimal_point_alignment, the markup given using the 50% width to align 4.321, 43.21, etc. (the second example) no longer appears aligned in that section. Do those 4321's appear aligned at the decimal point in anyone else's browser, or has this solution been deprecated? -- Thisis0 (talk) 05:09, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I wondered about that the first time I saw this. The way it is done, there is an optical illusion that the decimal column is slanted. This example would have been better with the same number of decimals:

432 .21

43 .21

4 .21

--— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

No, there's no case at all of optical illusion. What you've done above is rather humorous, because with no special formatting, the decimals would have lined up just fine; using the same number of decimals right-justified will always keep the decimals aligned. However, with your "50%" formatting, you've actually forced the decimal points to not be aligned. Look closely. Better yet, drag your browser to a screen edge and see for yourself how you've just made decimals vertically askew that would normally line up just fine. <ahem> So anyway... the goal is a solution to line up the decimals with different amounts of numbers after the decimal. The first solution works, but the second obviously no longer does. At least in my browser. Anyone else? -- Thisis0 (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Displaying code section - what's the point?

What's the point of the "Displaying the table code which generates a table" section? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with tables. Apart from the rather dubious suggestion of replacing pipe characters with their HTML entity quivalents, this section could equally apply to displaying *any* wikitext. It really should go in another page somewhere, shouldn't it? Stevage 00:13, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed it before. It does some to be of little worth, except for those who have to display wikitable code. And that answer can be found by looking at the source of the page.... —EncMstr 00:51, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Hideable tables?

Is it possible to have a table's content be hide able, in the same way that {{hidden}} or {{Navbox}} works? Or is it possible to put a table into the hidden template? I've been unable to figure out how to do this so far. Any ideas? Drewcifer (talk) 19:22, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

How about {{Navbox with columns}}? --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That's definately closer to what I was thinking, but unfortunately it makes everything smaller and doesn't allow for some of the more complex table tricks like rowspan, colspan, align, etc. Drewcifer (talk) 14:27, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

These table classes might help:

• collapsible
• collapsed
• autocollapse

I have not worked with these, but they are used in the navbox core template: {{Navbox/core}}. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That worked great! Thanks. For anyone interested, there's more instruction here: Help:Collapsing. Drewcifer (talk) 21:33, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

List of classes

Speaking of the above (collapsible table classes), shouldn't we have a list of all the different classes and what they do? You'd think the "Classes" section would do that, but it doesn't really. For instance, I still have no idea what the difference is between "wikitable" and "prettytable". Drewcifer (talk) 22:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

See #Table parameters above. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 23:16, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. But why isn't that on the actual help page? Also, some explanations of each would be nice, no? Drewcifer (talk) 00:10, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

We could start a section on classes and tag it with expand. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Sound list

I'm having difficulty with a sortable list. Can someone help? wikipedia:sound/list has a very wide column on the left, titled "File Name (click to download)." First of all, I tried to make this column narrower by specifying its width, but it didn't work. Can someone else please try to make this huge column narrower? Also, is there a way to select only material in that column to copy and paste? When I try to copy that column to paste, I end up having to copy the entire table. Furthermore, is there a quick and easy way to move the column titled "composer" over to the left-hand-side of the table? The list has hundreds of rows, and I don't want to have to edit the code for each row individually. Thanks in advance for any help.Ferrylodge (talk) 20:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I've used several fairly large hammers on it, and can't get it to budge. I'll work on it some more in a few hours. —EncMstr 22:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that would be great. Much appreciated....Ferrylodge (talk) 22:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I've got the columns narrowed now. The key was to replace underscores with spaces in the URLs listed in the left-most column.

But that still leaves the other questions. Is there a way to select only material in the left column to copy and paste? When I try to copy that column to paste, I end up having to copy the entire table. Furthermore, is there a quick and easy way to move the column titled "composer" over to the left-hand-side of the table? The list has hundreds of rows, and I don't want to have to edit the code for each row individually. Thanks.Ferrylodge (talk) 23:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes indeed: Hold down Ctrl while selecting the column you want. At least it works in Mozilla, SeaMonkey, and FireFox. As for changing the column order, several ideas come to mind. You want me to change it? —EncMstr 23:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

That's great. I added an explanation at the top of the table about how to select a column. I went to a computer that uses Firefox, and it worked fine (though it did not work on my primary computer which only has Internet Explorer). Unfortunately, when I switched to the compuyer that uses Firefox, it looks like the left-most column is very wide again. Grr. Anyway, regarding how to move the composer column over to the far left, please do that if you can, and please also let me know if there's a simple way for me to do that myself in the future. Thanks.Ferrylodge (talk) 00:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Colors

I have created a table using background colors. When I print it out, the colors don't get printed. I have used both "style" and "bground" commands for the colors. Medicjm (talk) 12:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a browser issue. In FireFox, you would set File > Page Setup > Print Background. There is a similar setting for IE and other browsers. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:03, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Bad link in section: External links

The (more information) link is bad. The first link on the line, gives the correct www - it is http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Duesentrieb/csv2wp_%28en%29 Power.corrupts (talk) 09:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

2-column gallery for wide images

Hello all. Any suggestions as to how create a table that looks like the standard <gallery></gallery> format, but with two wide images (or even one wide image) instead of four standard ones. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers - Gobeirne (talk) 22:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, here's one quick and dirty way to approximate it. First is a standard gallery for comparison:

• 
  Pied Cormorant
• 
  Surrealistically beautiful
• 
  Spider & fly
• 
  Inquisitive bird

Then a table arranged as 2x2 using gallery style with thumbnails twice as wide as the gallery makes them.

Pied Cormorant	Surrealistically beautiful
Spider & fly	Inquisitive bird

Further refinement would be to override the thumbnail image style—if desired—to remove their borders, maybe even the little expand icon. Is this good enough? —EncMstr 19:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Or are you looking for something more like this? --jjron (talk) 11:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

• Sample gallery
• 
  Pied Cormorant
• 
  Surrealistically beautiful

• Both those options are fantastic :) Thanks! - Gobeirne (talk) 19:05, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

suppress horizontal border?

Can somebody help me write a table with two columns and four rows, such that between the first and second row and also between 3rd and 4th there is no horizontal border line? I can't figure it out. Thanks, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean like this?:

col 1	col 2
row 1 col 1 row 2 col 1	row 1 col 2 row 2 col 2
row 3 col 1 row 4 col 1	row 3 col 2 row 4 col 2

—EncMstr 21:28, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, very good. Thanks again Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:55, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Propose delete Wikitable spacing overlap problems subsection

I've posted a proposed change at Template talk:Ph:Table which is the place from which the "Wikipedia-specific help" content on this page comes, but since I suspect few people look at that discussion page, I thought I'd post a note here requesting input. Please read the proposal at Template talk:Ph:Table and post any support, opposition, or comments there. Thanks. --Bryan H Bell (talk) 03:54, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Vandalized

This page has been vandalized with nonsensical Latin. I have put a relevant tag. Someone please find time to revert vandalism.Cygnus_hansa (talk) 06:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If you mean Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit... etc., that is standard filler used in many text and typesetting examples. See Lorem ipsum for the history. —EncMstr (talk) 06:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Tables acting different in different web browsers?

Do tables and images interact differently in different web browers? For example, on my userpage, in Opera and Firefox, the table on the right side of the page has no problems with the images being next to it. However, in Internet Explorer, it doesn't seem to want to let any of the images be next to it, and thus it tosses all of the content below it. Any thoughts to get around this? It's no big deal, but if fixable, would be nice. -- Natalya 12:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Header background

How to change the Header background from the default grey? Setting style="background" only changes the main content and not the header column(s). SunCreator (talk) 14:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Like this:

{| 
|- style="background: lightblue"
! Column 1
! Column 2
|- 
| Row 1
| Row 1
|}

Column 1	Column 2
Row 1	Row 1

Note that if you use class="wikitable" or some of the other table classes, the CSS overrides the header background. --— Gadget850 (Ed)talk 15:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Pipe syntax: no more than 2 single pipes on a line?

The pipe syntax tutorial, copied from WikiMedia, tells us: Just remember: no more than 2 single pipes on a line!

The following code exceeds that limit:

{|border="1"
|width="80" align="left"| <br>left<br> ||width="80" align="center"|center||width="80" align="right"|right||width="80" align="center" valign="top"|top||width="80" align="center" valign="center"|center||width="80" align="center" valign="bottom"|bottom
|-align="center"
|style="background:Gainsboro"|Gainsboro||style="background:LightGray"|LightGray||style="background:Silver"|Silver||style="background:DarkGray"|DarkGray||style="background:Gray; color:white"|Gray||style="background:DimGray; color:white"|DimGray
|}

However, it produces the required results for me:

left	center	right	top	center	bottom
Gainsboro	LightGray	Silver	DarkGray	Gray	DimGray

Am I just misinterpreting the caveat, or is such code simply unreliable on specific platform/browser combinations? Alternatively, if the limitation has since been fixed, then perhaps we should amend the tutorial accordingly.

Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this. --Error -128 (talk) 14:18, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The double bars (||) are surrogate line breaks. I don't know if they were added later, which would explain why the rule was accurate at one time. —EncMstr (talk) 16:59, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, EncMstr—that would explain the precise meaning of "line". Sorry for the dumb question; I'm thinking more clearly this morning. Thanks for the clarification. --Error -128 (talk) 06:18, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed column widths need fixing?

I would be grateful if someone would help me out with the tables in List of Florida State University people. There are a lot of them, with or without a few illustration to the right, and each is a different size from the others, causing the page to look a bit sloppy. The obvious answer was to use fixed width columns. I, thus, tried beginning each table with code like this:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
| width="150pt"|Athlete
| width="550pt"|Notability
|-

The tables changed when I did that, but not all the same way! I'm obviously out of my depth, and some advice would really be great. Thanks. Tim Ross (talk) 10:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

You want "px" for pixels instead of "pt". --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, if you want the column widths to scale with page width, use %: width="10%" —EncMstr (talk) 18:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you both very much. Tim Ross (talk) 21:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I feel pretty incompetent, and apologize in advance for wasting someone's time, but I can not get either of the above methods to give me consistent tables. They each "seem" to work until I do a number of tables in a row and then compare them. They don't match when I do that. I would be extremely grateful if someone would edit the first 4 or 5 tables at List of Florida State University people so that they match. I'll happily repeat your method with the rest of the tables. Tim Ross (talk) 22:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

You might like to take a look at the current test in my sandbox, Tim; I've specified the width for the table as well as for each column:

{| class="wikitable" style="width:82%"

|-

! width="25%"| Alumni

! width="75%"| Notability

|-

While the results look fine here, they will depend on browser, screen resolution and other settings. I hope the approach improves things at your end, too—or at least helps you move a little further towards a solution. --Error -128 (talk) 02:00, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Perfect! Just what I was trying to achieve. Thanks, again, everyone. Tim Ross (talk) 10:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

text align a whole colum

Is there an easy way to align all items in a column to the right (or center) without needed to do it for each individual cell. I was thinking of using it on List of African countries and dependencies to get the numbers (area, pop, gdp) into the cetner, rather than left. Thanks Chris_huh^talk 14:58, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Chesapeake, Virginia

I cant seem to get 3 new things I added to the Chesapeake Page Table to save my life! I have Its Sister City, Highest and Lowest Points exactly like the orthers are! Im not missing nonthing and ITS FRUSTRATING ME!!! Can someone help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiloli (talk • contribs) 15:57, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Tak ea a look at {{Infobox Settlement}}. There is no field for sister city, it is "twin1" and "twin1_country". Highest points is "elevation_max_m" or "elevation_max_ft", lowest is "elevation_min_m" or "elevation_min_ft". I fixed the city. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:54, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Table column not changing width?

Edit: nvm, its something wrong with firefox 3....ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 20:11, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Was there a question? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:13, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Originally, there was a table that was spaced horribly and I was trying to get the width things to work, and no matter what, it wouldn't change, and thought I wasn't doing it right cause I'm not experienced at tables (and asked someone to take a look at it at my sandbox, gone now)...the problem wasn't that I wasn't doing it right...Firefox v3 just wasn't showing the table width changes, showed up on IE......ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 20:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Help needed

See the discussion at Talk:Timeline of chemical elements discoveries. I need too many columns and the table becomes cramped. If I try something like it has been suggested on the talkpage, then I cannot use the sort feature. Any suggestions? Nergaal (talk) 16:01, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

wikitables and HTML-style tables overlap each other in Firefox?

I find wikitables and HTML-style tables overlap each other in Firefox (2 or 3 2.0.0.16 in Vista). Here is an example.

In Firefox and Mozilla this HTML header text will be overlapped by the left hand wikitable
list1 text
list2 text
list3 text
list4 text
And some really, really, really, really wide list5 text

header 1 Firefox shows this wikitable overlapping the right hand table	header 2 HIER	header 3 ICI
row 1, cell 1, but Opera will keep them apart	row 1, cell 2	row 1, cell 3
row 2, cell 1 lorem ipsum blah abracadabra fie foe fum sur le pont	row 2, cell 2	row 2, cell 3

What I see with Firefox 2 or 3 2.0.0.16 or 1.0.6 or Netscape

I have asked about this on the Village pump .-84user (talk) 19:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Running FireFox 3 on XP. The second table is under the first as I would expect it. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I am now running Firefox 3 on Vista and the tables display correctly. (I was mistaken when I wrote Firefox 3 above, I had upgraded to 2.0.0.16 somehow thinking that was 3!) So it seems this was a long-standing Firefox problem - I have reproduced it as far back as Firefox 1.0.6 on Damn Small Linux.-84user (talk) 20:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Interesting: On windows XP SP2 running FireFox 3.0.1, it looks fine, with one table above the other. On Linux (Fedora 8) running FireFox 2.0.0.16, the tables intersect, similar to the screenshot above. —EncMstr (talk) 21:19, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Text below and not next to a table

I have a question for the section of the article AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Color_code: I want that the text of the next section begins below and not next to the table. How is it working? thanks in advance -Sucrine ( ><> talk) 11:31, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Give me a bit. There is some odd stuff in that section, such as a TOC table. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:22, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Y The table was inside a table, there was a TOC table and there was some orphaned HTML table code. I'm not sure of the why, but I cleaned it out. I actually use that article at work when customers need a different power cable. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:21, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your work -Sucrine ( ><> talk) 13:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)