Markdown Table Generator

Frequently Asked Questions

• How does the Markdown table generator work?+
  Paste your data as comma-, tab-, semicolon- or pipe-separated rows, one record per line. The tool splits each line into cells, pads the columns so the source lines up neatly, and outputs a valid Markdown table with a header row, an alignment row, and the body. Copy it straight into a README, issue or documentation file.
• What is the structure of a Markdown table?+
  Three parts: a header row of cells separated by pipes, a second row of dashes that separates the header from the body and sets alignment, and then one row per record. For example, a header “| Name | Role |”, an alignment row “| --- | --- |”, and data rows below. This generator produces all three automatically.
• How do I set column alignment?+
  Colons in the dashes row control it: :--- aligns a column left, :--: centres it, and ---: aligns it right. Pick an alignment in the tool and it applies it to every column. Left is the default and the most common; right is handy for numeric columns, and centre for short labels.
• What delimiters does it accept?+
  Comma, tab, semicolon and pipe. By default it auto-detects the delimiter from your first line, which handles most pasted spreadsheet data (tab) and CSV (comma) without any setting. You can also force a specific delimiter if your data is ambiguous — for instance text that contains commas within cells.
• Can I paste straight from a spreadsheet?+
  Yes. Copying a range from Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers puts tab-separated data on your clipboard, which the auto-detect handles directly. Paste it in and you get a Markdown table — one of the fastest ways to move tabular data into documentation.
• How do I include a pipe character in a cell?+
  Because the pipe separates columns, a literal pipe inside a cell must be escaped as \| in Markdown, otherwise it would be read as a new column. If your data contains pipes, escape them in the source before generating, or the table structure will break where they appear.
• Why is the output padded with spaces?+
  The padding aligns the columns in the raw Markdown source so it is easy to read and edit by hand, even before it is rendered. Renderers ignore the extra spaces, so the displayed table looks the same either way — but a tidy source is far more pleasant to maintain in a README or docs file.
• What are the limitations of Markdown tables?+
  Plain Markdown tables are deliberately simple: they do not support merged cells, multi-line cell content, or nested tables, and very wide tables can be awkward on small screens. For complex layouts you would use HTML tables instead. For the common case of a clean, readable data table, though, Markdown is ideal.
• Is my data sent anywhere?+
  No. All parsing and formatting happens in your browser. Nothing you paste is transmitted, logged or stored, so the tool is safe to use with private or internal data.
• Is the Markdown Table Generator free?+
  Completely free, with no account or limit. It works offline once the page has loaded and collects no data.