Help:How to make tables

Tables can help you put a lot of information in to a concentrated space. They are a little bit difficult to make so only read this if you are already farmiliar with how text formatting works. To start a table make a line with just {| and nothing else. On the next line put a | which means you are making a cell in the first row and put the contents of that cell on the rest of the line. On the next line put an other | and the contents of the second cell. Make as many cells in a row as you want using more lines starting with|. To start the second row put |- on the next line to signify a new row. Think of it as making a table row by row. To finish the table make a line at the end with |}. Below you can see an example of what you would type to make a table and what it makes in the article.

A simple table

You type	You get
{| |''Cabin'' |''Number of campers'' |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Number of campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Simple tables should really only be used for making tables that you do not want people to see are infact tables. For example, to make the before and after thing above I actually used a table with headers on the columns and two cells. I put the code block of what you type in one cell and put the output table in the second cell (you can put tables inside table cells). Using a table was the only way I could have made it look like that. Tables can give you a lot of control over your page.

Borders

To make a border around your table and little borders around your cells you place a border attibute in the first line of the table after the {| like this {|border="1". You can see an example of this below.

You type	You get
{|border="1" |''Cabin'' |''Campers'' |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Headers

You can make headers to rows or columns of a table by using !. If you use headers on columns you must have a |- on the line before the first cell of the first row. Headers are bold and are centered in their cell.

Headers on columns

You type	You get
{|border="1" !Cabin !Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Headers on rows

You type	You get
{|border="1" !Name |Adric Allie |Will Brewster |Teddy Brown |- !Seal time |1:28 |1:48 |1:32 |}	Name Adric Allie Will Brewster Teddy Brown Seal time 1:28 1:48 1:32

Attributes on headers

You type	You get
{|border="1" !align="right" style="color:green;"|Cabin !style="background-color:black;color:white"|Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Justification

You can make a table appear on the right or middle of a page by using the align attribute like this: {|align="right". You can also set it to "center". If you want to make the table be in the center and have it have a border you can add multiple attributes to it like this: {|align="right" border="1". Below you can see some examples.

Right

You type	You get
{|align="right" border="1" !Cabin !Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Center

You type	You get
{|align="center" border="1" !Cabin !Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Captions

You can caption a table by adding an extra line after the first line. This line is started with |+ and then after that you put the caption.

On the top of the table

You type	You get
{|border="1" |+Some Birch Rock cabins !Cabin !Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Some Birch Rock cabins Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Attributes on captions

You can put some attributes from this article on captions like this.

You type	You get
{|border="1" |+align="bottom" style="color:red"|Some Birch Rock cabins !Cabin !Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Some Birch Rock cabins Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Colors

You can make the text and border of a table a different color and the background of it a different color with the style attribute. After the {| in the first line you can add style="color:green;background-color:blue;" to make the text and borders green and the backround blue. Look below for examples.

Available colors

Red
Green
Yellow
Blue
Orange
Purple
Gray
Maroon
Crimson

Change the text and border color

You type	You get
{|border="1" style="color:green;" !Cabin !Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Change the background color

You type	You get
{|border="1" style="background-color:blue;" !Cabin !Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Change both the text and border color and the background color

You type	You get
{|border="1" style="color:white;background-color:black;" !Cabin !Campers |- |Cabin 1 |4 |- |Cabin 6 |4 |- |Eagle's Nest |8 |- |Buzzard's Roost |8 |}	Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8

Attributes on rows

You can add attributes to a single row in a table by adding them after the |- that started that row.

You type	You get
{|border="1" !Cabin !Campers |-align="right" |Cabin 1 |4 |-style="color:green;" |Cabin 6 |4 |-align="center" |Eagle's Nest |8 |-style="background-color:purple;color:yellow;" |Buzzard's Roost |8 |} Cabin Campers Cabin 1 4 Cabin 6 4 Eagle's Nest 8 Buzzard's Roost 8