Better support for tables on mobile

Hey all!

I was writing some notes with tables the other day and I think there could be better support for them on mobile.

Firstly, it's notable that there's no shortcut to make a table on the toolbar. I think the best way to do this would be, when the user presses the shortcut, bring up a small dialogue box asking how many rows and columns to make, then the user can just populate the values after it's made. (Or maybe they could fill the values in within the interface rather than fiddling with the markdown directly, but not sure about that addition).

Secondly, and I think more usefully, it would be nice if Joplin could add new rows to the table being worked on if the user presses enter at the end of the last row. In the same way that having an ordered/unordered/checkbox list will add a new item after the user hits enter, you could do the same thing for tables, detecting the number of columns in the current row and adding template space for the next one.

Both ideas aim to cut down on fiddling back and forth between the pipes/dashes that form the table vs the actually important content in them.

Excited to hear what you all think!

5 Likes

I just switched to Joplin from Obsidian, and I really miss table editing support ! maintain a number logs in table format that I usually update on my phone since that activities that I’m logging are not performed near a computer.

I guess that I could copy and paste the table in and out of obsidian mobile to make the edits, but I’d rather stay in Joplin.

When Joplin 3.5 for mobile is released, it has a ui added to allow adding and removing rows and columns for tables in the Rich Text Editor. Don’t think there is any shortcut to create a new table though

1 Like

A simple way to implement a create table button would be to insert this text:

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That creates a single column single row table, starting as a table header. Then you can use the new table UI to add more rows and columns