Markdown table generator

How to make a Markdown table

1. Fill in the grid, or paste your cells. Type in the cells, and add or remove rows and columns. To start from a spreadsheet, select the cells in Excel or Google Sheets, copy them, paste them into the box above the grid and select Import cells. CSV text and existing Markdown tables import the same way.
2. Set the alignment. Each column has a menu: default, left, center or right. Right alignment suits prices and other numbers.
3. Copy the table. The Markdown updates as you type. Copy it or download it as a .md file. Up to 200 rows and 20 columns.

Markdown table syntax

Markdown tables come from GitHub-flavored Markdown (GFM). GitHub, GitLab, most documentation tools and many help center editors read them. A table has three parts:

• A header row: the column names, with a pipe (|) between cells.
• A delimiter row: at least three dashes per column. Colons in it set the alignment.
• Body rows: one line per row. A row with fewer cells is filled with empty ones.

The start table in the generator, with the price column set to right, gives this Markdown:

| Shipping zone | Delivery time | Price |
| ------------- | ------------- | ----: |
| EU            | 2 to 4 days   |    $5 |
| US            | 3 to 6 days   |    $8 |

The spaces that line up the columns are only for people who read the Markdown file. A renderer ignores them, so the table works the same with Line up the columns with spaces cleared, and the file is smaller.

Excel, Google Sheets and CSV to Markdown

When you copy cells from Excel or Google Sheets, the clipboard holds tab-separated text: a tab between cells and a line break between rows. The generator reads the first line to decide the format:

• Tabs: cells copied from a spreadsheet.
• Commas or semicolons: CSV, whichever appears more often outside quotes. Excel writes semicolons in many European locales, where the comma is the decimal mark.
• Pipes at both ends: an existing Markdown table, with its alignment kept, so you can edit it in the grid.

CSV quoting is followed: "Can I cancel, anytime?" is one cell, two double quotes inside quotes are one quote, and a quoted cell can hold a line break. To convert a CSV file, open it in a text editor, copy all of it and paste it here.

Pipes, line breaks and other special cases

• Pipe characters inside a cell would start a new cell, so the generator writes them as \|.
• Line breaks inside a cell become <br>, because each table row must be one line. GitHub shows the break; viewers that do not allow HTML show the tag as text.
• Runs of spaces in a cell become one space, as Markdown would show them anyway.
• Empty trailing rows and columns are left out of the result.
• Wide characters such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean count as two columns when the generator lines up the table, so the columns also line up in a monospace font.

What Markdown tables cannot do

• No merged cells. There is no colspan or rowspan. Repeat the value, split the table, or use an HTML table where HTML is allowed.
• No table without a header. GFM needs a header row. If your data has none, clear First row is the header and the generator adds Column 1, Column 2 and so on; rename them.
• No block content. Lists, code blocks and paragraphs cannot go inside a cell. Inline formatting such as **bold**, links and inline code can.
• No formulas. Pasted cells keep their values as shown in the spreadsheet, not the formulas.

Tables in help content

Tables are often the clearest way to answer a support question: shipping zones and times, plan limits, supported file types, error codes and what to do about each. Keep them small, put the thing people look up in the first column, and give every column a header that says what it holds, with the unit.

To bring a whole document into Markdown with its tables, paste it into Google Docs to Markdown, or convert web pages with the HTML to Markdown converter. To print the result, use Markdown to PDF. Paperlink AI reads tables in your uploaded files and help pages too, so a customer support chatbot can answer questions such as "how long does shipping to the US take?" from them.