Have you ever wished that you could insert a table into one of your hubs?  Now, you can.

This week, HubPages has added the Table Capsule to its set of hubtool components.  This capsule allows you create a table from scratch or to create a table from a Csv file.  This means that you can build a table from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

There are three ways to create tables using the new Table Capsule.

In today’s blog, I will show how to create a table from scratch and how to import it from Microsoft Excel.

Creating a Table From Scratch

When you first add a table to your hub, you will see an empty table with three columns and four rows.

Once you click the edit the button, you will see three drop-down menus:

  • -insert/delete column/row-
  • -center, right, or left-
  • -bold or unbold-

These are the actions that can be performed on the table.  To do an action, you select a table’s cell, select the action that you want from a drop-down menu, and then hit the “update” button.  When you select a table’s cell, the cell is highlighted in orange.

In the screen shot below, I have selected the header cell for the third column:

You will notice that the cells in the last column and in the last row are grayed out.  The purpose here is to make it easy to add columns or rows.  If you select any cell in the last column, as soon as you start typing, the entire column turns white and is available for editing.  A new gray column is added at the end.  The gray rows works in the same way.

If you want to insert a column before a current column, you would do the following:

  • select the column (its borders turn orange)
  • select the “insert column before” from the drop-down menu
  • hit the “update” button.

After you type an entry into a cell, you can hit hit the TAB key to move to the next cell or the SHIFT+TAB to move back.  You can also use the DOWN arrow to move to the next cell below or use the UP arrow to move back.

In this way, you can insert columns or rows, delete columns or rows, and clear out columns or rows.  You can also choose make text bold.  The default is to make headers bold.  You can also choose whether text should be shifted right, shifted left, or centered.  The default is for all text to be centered.

Creating a table from Microsoft Excel

To create a table from Excel, the first step is to export the table as a CSV file.  This is done by clicking the down arrow of the “Save as type” when you save the file.  Then, just make sure to pick CSV format.

Once the CSV file is saved, hit the edit button for the table and select the radio button that says “My Computer”.  You will then be able to upload the CSV file as shown below:

When you are done, you will have the following:

Then hit save and you are done.

In the coming weeks, we will be adding additional features to the table capsule including additional table styles and the ability to sort columns.

If you have ideas or suggestions for making the table capsule better, please let us know.

Posted by:HubPages Admin

14 replies on “New Feature Announcement: the Table Capsule”

  3. Hi Ray,

    We are still working through the details of table styles but my assumption is that you will be able to change the colors of alternating rows as one of the style choices.

    -Larry

    Reply

  9. Excellent – using a matrix can save so many words and makes it much easier to get a point across. Being able to highlight particular cells would certainly be useful.

    Reply

  11. Hi Mikhail,

    The table capsule has many advantages over a screen capture.

    (1) It is easy to quickly export Microsoft Excel data to a hub.

    (2) It easy to make changes to the data from within your hubpages account (add columns/add rows/change values without uploading)

    (3) The data is actually stored as an html table which makes it easier for search engines to index it correctly.

    I think ultimately its up to each author to decide whether they prefer an image or using the table capsule.

    -Larry

    Reply

  13. Thanks Larry Freeman for comment on my blogger question. I wasnt sure how best to contact you and so i have decided to make my comments here. My account at Hubpages is Judges389 and i woke up one morning trying to view my hubs and got a message that my account has been blocked. I never had any duplicated material, links or any of the things you mentioned above and never had a any comment on my hubs to indicate any non compliance with Hubpages rules but my account was blocked. I wrote a couple of emails asking hubpages to point out why my account was blocked and they never replied. I even tried to ask on the forum but they blocked my account.

    My frustration is that Hubpages may block some articles or accounts considered to be spam with automation, and sometimes you block genuine hardworking hubbers too. The most frustrating part is that you dont communicate why you block the account, and in my case i wrote a couple emails and no one replied ; and i wrote on hub pages external blog and my comments were deleted. You only commented only after taking this discussion onto blogger.

    I would be glad if you can investigate my account and let me know why you blocked my account—you can send me an email. In addition i would be glad if you can explain what action one can take if one’s account is blocked by Hubpages by error and hubpages does not communicate to that hubber, how else that person can do to resolve the problem.

    By the way I still think Hub pages is a great site and with fantastic indexing timeline and excellent ranking!!

    Reply

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