Help talk:Tables

Let's keep it simple at the top and add tricks in extra sections down the page. Cheers :-) --Rogerhc 07:07, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Page layout
The page is laid out as follows:
 * Under each heading is a 2 column parent table with the example table nested into its left column and the example's wiki markup in pre tags in the right column.
 * The parent table is width="100%" and the two columns containing the nested tables are each width="50%". Pre tags containing long lines in the right column override its width="50%" attribute in most browsers which is good flexible browser behavior.
 * None of the page's sectional headings, H1, H2, H3, etc. are within tables, except the one in the example of how to do that. This avoids the to some confusing problem that when one previews an edit section within a parent table the parent table previews as broken; broken because the part of it above the edit section previewed is outside of and thus not parsed in the section previewed.

This will work well in most browsers I think.

Let us know if the layout brakes anything in your browser and which browser and version that is.

--Rogerhc 17:44, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Headings in tables
Of course, you can use headings within tables. Your above note on "MediaWiki not supporting this" is wrong. -- :Bdk: 11:11, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I have now added a section on Tables with H1, H2, H3 etc. headings. :-) Rogerhc 04:45, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Tables in Excel (/Calc) converted to Wiki Markup
Is there any software available to convert an "Microsoft Excel" or "Open-Office Calc" table into a MediaWiki markup text document?

Would this be something people would consider usefull, as if it doesn't already exist, and there is a demand, I could a quick, basic one, as I use quite a few tables in my wiki.--Barryred


 * Yes! This would be absolutely helpful! --Nino Gonzales 04:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * See m:User talk:DBP.--Patrick 08:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I've not tried this as I'm not a Python man but it might help. http://just-tech.blogspot.com/2007/01/python-html-tables-to-mediawiki.html --Dopple 09:27, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Cellpadding doesn't work
Look at this page in firefox and also in IE6... The cell padding example doesn't actually work Help:Tables. It's not adding any padding.

In fact I dont see 60px padding in the following either (table markup as raw HTML):

Looks like this is some weirdness specifically in the mediawiki.org because it works fine elsewhere. See this cellpadding example on the test wikipedia.

Must be a CSS issue I guess, since the output HTML does include the cellpadding attribute as expected. But then I didn't think a css definition would overwrite a 'local' html attribute.

Also cellpadding works for TH's but not for TD's. Compare:

So that's all very strange. -- Harry Wood 11:41, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The bug is in the local MediaWiki:Common.css:

On the 5th line, it should be

(saw someone testing it on test.wp) --Splarka 03:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Splarka. Well spotted.
 * So a sysop should make that fix to the MediaWiki:Common.css page. I'll ask someone
 * -- Harry Wood 14:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)