Our Simplified Table Editor
January 31st, 2008 by Sarah
We have improved our tables making it easier for you to add or remove cells, align text, merge cells, create headings, or delete your table. On top of this, you can now place Latex, code, and RSS feeds into your tables.
Below you can find instructions for formatting your table. We hope you enjoy this new feature and continue to send us feedback about how to make Wikispaces even simpler.
- To edit your table, click “Edit This Page.”
- Place your cursor in a cell of the table that you wish to change. Our table icon will appear at the corner of that cell.
- Click on it and a drop-down menu will appear in which you can edit a cell, row, column, or your entire table.
- Choose your desired option and watch as your table changes within the visual editor.
I love your site I think your site is one of the greats new tools for me as a teacher and I can’t thank you enough for continuing to grow and improve! Virginia
That’s the way table should be. Excellence improvement
I couldn’t figure out how to get LaTeX to work. Inserting LaTeX as code is fine, but is there a way to get it to render?
GOLDENTREE,
Are you placing both math tags on separate lines from the LaTeX? The code in the table cell should look something like this:
[[math]]
LaTeX here
[[math]]
If you are still having difficulties, point us to your space and page and we’ll take a look at it.
Best,
Sarah
Awesome! I’ve have been looking for this feature! Wikispaces is getting better and better!
This is a great enhancement!
Is it possible to remove the lines (i.e. the grid)?
Because that way you can get aligned text + images!
Regards,
Peter.
Peter,
We are looking into a new tool that will allow for better text formatting. At the moment, I suppose you could use the tables to center font. To do so, go to “Manage Space,” “Look and Feel” and then “Edit your wiki stylesheet.” There you can change the border style for tables.
However, this would change the border for all tables you place on your space.
Best,
Sarah
I found that the table icon did not always appear when I would click on a cell, especially on the top row or rightmost column. (I am using Firefox 2.0 with Mac 10.4.)
Secondly, a couple of times when I went to preview a change, the table completely disappeared on the visual editor portion of the page.
Thirdly, when I went into the text editor and returned, some of the previous “control characters,” such as == ,were displayed rather than interpreted. One problem with things like == was that an additional space was sometimes added. = =. I think this tended to happen on long lines that were wrapped in the editor, but I’m not certain.
In other words, on my system, this new table editor seems buggy.
I much appreciate the additional features, but I don’t like having to make 4 clicks just to add another row or column when I could have done it with one click before. Any way to get back to the other option?
Thanks wikispaces team - great new feature that I had been hoping for!
Hi Martin,
Sorry to hear you’re having trouble with tables. If there are pages you’ve saved that have any of these sorts of anomalies in their history, please let us know at help@wikispaces.com.
At the moment, we don’t have an option to go back to the old style table editor. Our move to the new style was a bit of a necessity as Internet Explorer 7 in particular simply did not support the old built-in table editing in a stable way. I do see that the new style is a lot more click-heavy that the old one, we’ll see if we can streamline this.
We’re hard at work fixing any bugs that have cropped up in the editor changes — thanks for the report and your patience.
Best,
James
Some of my tables that used to work before the table upgrade now don’t. On this page:
http://historic-wheeling.wikispaces.com/Main+St+-+800%2C+odd+numbers
the second line of the table is no longer under the top line, and I have no idea why or how to fix it. As I said it previously worked fine. On another page that stopped working an equal sign has somehow appeared in each cell - what does that mean? This is frustrating to have working tables become discombolulated.
I use a Mac with OS 10.4.11 and Safari (and get same results with FireFox).
Thanks,
Chuck
Its now working - I found one mistake. Sorry!
Hi Peter -
An amendment to Sarah’s reply in the form a hack.
It is possible to attach a page-specific CSS for a single page. So, with this hack, you can eliminate the gridlines on a single page without affecting the rest of the site.
See
https://themes.wikispaces.com/~AttachCSS
for details here. Notice the Navigation is GREEN on this page only - page specific.
Hope that helps!
D!X
Chuck,
Okay. If you have any other problems, let us know. You can always send us an e-mail to help@wikispaces.com .
Sarah
I’m not over-impressed by the new table editor as it just adds a big overhead extra clicks but no obvious functionality. The old system was extremely easy once you understood it.
The Header feature is weird and not explained anywhere as far as I can see. I selected “make Header and it changed the text to a header style and centred it (didn’t want it centred) then the table formatting icon disappeared while the cursor was on that cell.
Subsequently I’ve found that if you apply a header style to a cell that also makes the cell unformattable, you have to revert to normal style, then close and open the editor to recover the table format icon for that cell (I’m using Thunderbird 2.0.0.12)
Your example above shows the headers with grey backgrounds and the cells with extra space after the text, how do you do that? that would be worth having.
Chris,
Thanks for your comments. We plan to streamline the new table editor as we move forward.
As for Headers, the picture above doesn’t actually have a header. It shows how one can highlight a row with the new tool in order to reformat it. If you would like to bold the text in the top row of a table instead of making the headers, you can do that by highlighting the text in the cell and clicking the bold icon in the toolbar.
Finally, the table formatting icon should appear when you click on a cell that has been made a header. If not, send us an e-mail to help@wikispaces.com with your space name and the page of the table and we’ll take a look at it.
Best,
Sarah
The old table editor system was faster to use and, ultimately, a better version.
Thank you for your feedback Sid-Vicious . We are looking to streamline this version as we move forward.
Best,
Sarah
Is there any way to vertically align items with the new table editor? I am trying to make better use of space (i.e. not have everything running down the left side of the page), but the result does not look pretty.
Also, do you have plans to implement a background color for cells? Although the new editor is fairly simple, I fear it might be too simple.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts or ideas!
Anthony C,
You can align text in the table columns using our table formatting tool. Are you trying to align text on your page? If so, you can do this without the table using our text formatting tool that looks like an “A.”
You can change the background color of text in your tables by using the text formatting tool. Let us know if you are looking for anything different than the way it currently works.
Best,
Sarah
Help, please!
I like the new features that you have added for tables, but have always been frustrated creating them in wikispaces. Even when I create and format them in Word and paste them over, they get messed up when I click save. I need help making sure the text in each column, stays to the top - please see example on https://ss08.wikispaces.com/ - which will be deleted as soon as I get an answer.
How can I get the text in the left column to stay to the top of the table, instead of moving to the center.
I appreciate your help….