HTML Tables

HTML tables allow web developers to arrange data into rows and columns.

Example

Company	Contact	Country
Alfreds Futterkiste	Maria Anders	Germany
Centro comercial Moctezuma	Francisco Chang	Mexico
Ernst Handel	Roland Mendel	Austria
Island Trading	Helen Bennett	UK
Laughing Bacchus Winecellars	Yoshi Tannamuri	Canada
Magazzini Alimentari Riuniti	Giovanni Rovelli	Italy

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Define an HTML Table

A table in HTML consists of table cells inside rows and columns.

Example

A simple HTML table:

<table>
<tr>
    <th>Company</th>
    <th>Contact</th>
    <th>Country</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Alfreds Futterkiste</td>
    <td>Maria Anders</td>
    <td>Germany</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>Centro comercial Moctezuma</td>
    <td>Francisco Chang</td>
    <td>Mexico</td>
</tr>
</table>

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Table Cells

Each table cell is defined by a <td> and a </td> tag.

td stands for table data.

Everything between <td> and </td> is the content of a table cell.

Example

<table>
<tr>
<td>Emil</td>
<td>Tobias</td>
<td>Linus</td>
</tr>
</table>

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Note: A table cell can contain all sorts of HTML elements: text, images, lists, links, other tables, etc.

Table Rows

Each table row starts with a <tr> and ends with a </tr> tag.

tr stands for table row.

Example

<table>
<tr>
<td>Emil</td>
    <td>Tobias</td>
    <td>Linus</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16</td>
    <td>14</td>
    <td>10</td>
</tr>
</table>

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You can have as many rows as you like in a table; just make sure that the number of cells are the same in each row.

Note: There are times when a row can have less or more cells than another. You will learn about that in a later chapter.

Table Headers

Sometimes you want your cells to be table header cells. In those cases use the <th> tag instead of the <td> tag:

th stands for table header.

Example

Let the first row be table header cells:

<table>
<tr>
<th>Person 1</th>
    <th>Person 2</th>
    <th>Person 3</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Emil</td>
    <td>Tobias</td>
    <td>Linus</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16</td>
    <td>14</td>
    <td>10</td>
</tr>
</table>

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By default, the text in <th> elements are bold and centered, but you can change that with CSS.

HTML Table Tags

Tag	Description
<table>	Defines a table
<th>	Defines a header cell in a table
<tr>	Defines a row in a table
<td>	Defines a cell in a table
<caption>	Defines a table caption
<colgroup>	Specifies a group of one or more columns in a table for formatting
<col>	Specifies column properties for each column within a <colgroup> element
<thead>	Groups the header content in a table
<tbody>	Groups the body content in a table
<tfoot>	Groups the footer content in a table