Markdown Table Generator
Markdown tables are easy to read and miserable to type. Fill in the grid below, set the alignment you want, and copy the markdown. Everything happens in your browser, nothing is uploaded.
Markdown
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | | -------- | -------- | -------- | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Start from data you already have
Paste a markdown table to edit it, or paste cells straight out of Google Sheets, Excel or Numbers. Nothing is uploaded, this page runs in your browser.
How a markdown table works
A table is a header row, a row of dashes, then one line per row. Cells are separated by pipes. The outer pipes are optional, but keeping them makes the source much easier to scan.
| name | qty | | ---- | --- | | pen | 2 | | pad | 1 |
The dashes row is what makes it a table rather than three lines of prose. Leave it out and markdown renders your text as a paragraph full of pipes.
Column alignment
A colon in the dashes row sets the alignment for that whole column. This is the one bit of table syntax worth memorising, because it is what makes a column of numbers readable.
| left | centre | right | | :--- | :----: | ----: | | a | b | 1.50 |
:---left aligned:---:centred---:right aligned, best for numbers---no alignment set, the renderer decides
Pipes inside a cell
A pipe is the cell separator, so a literal pipe in your text has to be escaped as \|. The grid above does this for you: type a pipe in a cell and the markdown comes out escaped. The same goes the other way, an escaped pipe in a table you paste in is read back as ordinary text.
What a table cannot hold
Cells are single lines. Bold, italic, links, inline code and images all work inside a cell, but a line break, a list or a fenced code block does not. If you need those, a table is the wrong shape for that content: use headings and sections instead.
Coming from a spreadsheet
Copy the cells in Google Sheets, Excel or Numbers and paste them into the box above. Spreadsheets put tab-separated text on the clipboard, which converts cleanly to a markdown table. The editor app does the same thing when you paste cells straight into a document.