Markdown Table Generator
Paste a spreadsheet range or a CSV and get an aligned Markdown table, with pipes inside cells escaped so the table does not silently break.
| Plan | Price | Seats |
| :--- | :------------------- | :---- |
| Free | $0 | 1 |
| Pro | $99 \| billed yearly | 5 |
| Team | $299 | 25 |
Rows 3
Columns 3
Header row first row of your data
Cells needing escapes 1
The separator row under the header is what makes this a table rather
than a paragraph, and it has to have one cell per column. That is the
usual reason a pasted Markdown table renders as text.
A pipe inside a cell was escaped and a newline became a <br>, because
both end a cell in Markdown. This is the input that most often turns a
valid table into a broken one, and a spreadsheet produces it regularly.
Output is valid and updates as you type.
Fix the highlighted fields to update the output.
Markdown tables are not difficult, they are tedious. The pipes have to line up if the source is going to be readable, the separator row under the header has to have one cell per column or the whole table renders as a paragraph, and a pipe inside a cell ends the cell.
That last one is the reason to use a tool. A price column reading $99 | billed yearly is exactly what a spreadsheet produces, and pasting it into a table adds a
column to one row, which breaks the table in a way that is hard to spot.
How to use
- Copy a range out of a spreadsheet, which gives you tab separated data, and paste it in.
- Pick the alignment.
- Copy the table.
Example
Three columns from a spreadsheet, one of them containing a pipe:
| Plan | Price | Seats |
| :--- | :------------------- | :---- |
| Free | $0 | 1 |
| Pro | $99 \| billed yearly | 5 |
| Team | $299 | 25 |The pipe is escaped as \|, the columns are padded to their widest cell, and the
separator row is padded with them so the source reads as a grid. The padding makes no
difference to what renders; it makes all the difference to editing the table later.
Pitfalls
A table with no header row is not a table. Markdown requires the separator row, and the separator row has to follow a header. If your data has no header, the tool generates one, because the alternative is a table that renders as text.
The separator row’s cell count has to match. Four columns of data and three cells of dashes gives you a paragraph of pipes. This is the most common reason a hand-written table does not render.
A pipe inside a cell has to be escaped. \| renders as a pipe and does not end
the cell. Nothing warns you about this; the row just gains a column.
A newline inside a cell is not possible. Markdown rows are lines. <br> is the
usual workaround and it is what this tool inserts, because a cell containing a line
break is common in exported data.
Alignment is per column and lives in the separator row. :--- left, :---:
centre, ---: right. Nothing else in the table carries alignment, and a renderer
that ignores it is within its rights.
Not every Markdown flavour has tables. They are a GitHub Flavored Markdown extension, in CommonMark only by convention. GitHub, GitLab, most static site generators and the WordPress block editor’s Markdown paste all support them; a strict CommonMark renderer does not.
Compatibility
Everything runs in the browser: nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored.
Comma and semicolon separated input is parsed with quote handling, so a cell wrapped
in double quotes can contain the separator and a doubled "" becomes one quote. That
is the CSV convention, and it is what a spreadsheet exports.
Column widths are measured in Unicode code points rather than UTF-16 units, so a cell containing an emoji or a CJK character does not throw the padding out by one. It is worth saying that perfect alignment is impossible in the general case: a double-width CJK character occupies two columns in a monospaced font and counts as one code point, so a table mixing scripts will look slightly uneven however it is padded. The renderer does not care either way.
The output is GitHub Flavored Markdown, which is what GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian, Notion’s importer, Docusaurus and most other tools expect.