TablePress understands a variety of common spreadsheet formats and can use them for importing and exporting tables. In addition, TablePress supports multiple import sources and can either add new tables from imported files or replace or append to existing tables.

Import Formats

The major import formats that TablePress automatically recognizes are described below. In addition, less common formats like ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet), Gnumeric, and SYLK are supported. Files from Apple Numbers are not supported at this time, so that it is recommended to save such a file to one of the supported formats before trying to import them.

CSV (Character-separated Values)

Every row is in a new line, every column is separated by a character (like “;” (semicolon), “,” (comma), or “\tab” (tabulator)). The plugin will try to determine the used separation character automatically. See the Wikipedia article for more information on the CSV format.

XLS/XLSX (Microsoft Excel)

TablePress also supports Microsoft Excel data formats for import (but not export!) of table data. Note that this support is not complete, and not all data features, like data types, are supported or available. Also, TablePress can only import the first worksheet of the Excel file. If you have problems importing tables from XLS or XLSX files, it’s recommend to save these tables in Excel as CSV files and try importing those.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

The plugin will import the first occurrence of an HTML table (enclosed in <table></table>) from an HTML file. It is not possible to import multiple tables from the same file or URL, but only the first one.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)

TablePress can import tables from JSON that represents a plain two-dimensional array of strings, where each string represents the content of a cell. It can also import its custom and more advanced JSON format, as created during the export. See the Wikipedia article for more information on the JSON format.

Export Formats

From the Import Formats that are described above, these are available as the target format for an exported table:

• CSV (Character-separated Values)
• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
• JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)

If multiple tables are exported at the same time, these will be stored in a ZIP archive.

Import Sources

TablePress can import files from four different sources, which can be selected on its “Import” screen:

• File Upload, by selecting or dragging and dropping files from your local computer
• URL (link address) of a file on a website
• Server (path of a file stored on the site’s server)
• Manual Input

The File Upload, URL, and Server import sources also support working with ZIP archives that contain multiple supported files. In addition, the File Upload import source allows to directly upload multiple files, even in different supported formats.

It is also possible to import tables form common online services like Google Sheets, Google Drive, Microsoft Excel Online, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox. Beginner-friendly step-by-step tutorials are available to guide you through the process of finding the necessary URL for that.

These manual imports are one-time imports. Using the Automatic Periodic Table Import feature module of the TablePress Max premium license plan, it’s possible to fully automate the import of a table file. This saves time and allows updating tables without having to log into your WordPress site!