Advanced Tables Plugin

Is there a way to ease writing out longer content within cells? See this screenshot. If I want to put multiple sentences in one cell, the markdown on the left side gets way too wide and long

@richardrl: text wrapping in tables in Edit mode is not possible.

I’m currently using section transclusion to add long texts in a table

@fscheidt: by “section transclusion” I assume you mean a block transclusion/block reference?

If so, I cannot get that to render correctly in a table: the block renders fine but the table itself does not.

An example:

image

renders as this

image

Hi @Klaas exactly, I mean block transclusion. Take a look at the images below, I think it’s pretty self-explanatory:

image

Preview result:

3 Likes
1 Like

Can you please clarify how to multiply a cell by a scalar? like $4*1.1? I can’t seem to get this to work, nor the same with any kind of bracket that makes sense. Thanks.

Is it possible to sort a table with a formula? For example to calculate the values of a given column with one formula, and with the second formula to sort the rows from min to max?

Here’s an example of multiplying by a scalar. In this example I multiply column A by 5.

| A   | B   |
| --- | --- |
| 2   | 10  |
<!-- TBLFM: $2=($1*5) -->

You will need to evaluate the formula (using the button in the toolbar) then sort the table afterwards using the button in the toolbar. Sorting is a manual button click, and not available from within a formula.

More information can be found in this document.

Thanks a lot for your quick reply. The formula you gave works. Seeing as the answer is so obvious I started looking at why I had problems. I was trying to multiply by a decimal number, like 1.1, and I am not able to do it. Is there something to take into considerations with decimals? Here is the formula I am setting up:

<!-- $>=(($4 * 0.8)+($5 * 1.2)) -->

1 Like

Ah, it looks like you have found a bug. Thank you for reporting it. I have filed an issue here: Algebra with decimals cannot be parsed in formulas · Issue #18 · tgrosinger/md-advanced-tables · GitHub

I haven’t been working on that project for a bit though, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back to that one. But when I do I’ll be sure to fix that :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Thanks. I hope you get to it and that the plugin continues growing. Your implementation of tables is very helpful and before it I did not use tables in Obsidian. I realize that formulas are a bit of an advanced use case here though.

Have you considered monetizing development? I mean in the sense of allowing people to vote/support bugs/features with their money. This type of system has been on my mind for ages, but I don’t actually know whether it’s been implemented, so I my suggestion may not even possible.

There are some links to ways you can support me in the plugin settings page and in the Github sidebar. But of course the contributions are completely voluntary.

Is there a way to put to do items in a table? The usual formatting of - [ ] doesn’t render correctly.

Hey @Grey, unfortunately I do not believe that there is. Advanced Tables only has an effect on table editing, not how they are rendered in preview mode. This might be something you could post about in the feature request section though to see if the Obsidian developers could work on it. You’re definitely not the first to ask.

Here’s an similar question.

The Advanced Tables Plugin finally resolved the pain of having to calculate the sum outside of the markdown file. Thank you!

I have a problem on my macOS (Big Sur 11.5.1) that I do not know how to fix. The -- > at the end of the formula is rendered as -->. Even in this post, I had to put a space in between -- and > otherwise it will render as an arrow. Interestingly, Obsidian can still process the formula correctly.

I know it’s not a problem with the plugin, but could not figure out how to turn it off.

@chchen, this is just Obsidian trying to be helpful with displaying those characters together as an arrow. If you open the file in textEdit you’ll see that it is still the expected --> . I don’t think this is something can be turned off, but it also isn’t causing a problem.

This syntax is used because it is an HTML comment, which prevents the formula from being rendered in preview mode.

Thanks for the explanation. When I first tested f(x) and it was not working, I thought the errors were caused by the automatic arrow thing and had to open another editor to be sure.

A suggestion: maybe you can make the HTML comment also monospaced? That will clear the confusion for new comers.

Tables dont work in preview mode (it just remove all spaces, breaks width and view of the table), also tables menu (align, move column etc) dont work. Why?

1 Like

I use Obsidian and Typora interchangeably, and noticed that the Advanced Tables Plugin somehow knows that edits have been made outside of Obsidian. Formulas no longer work after outside edits, e.g. a row deletion in Typora. This behavior took me a while to figure out as I thought markdown files are plain text and are blind to platforms. Is there a fundamental limit or is it a fixable bug?

By the way, I just found out that the Advanced Tables Plugin can carry out algebra with units in the table. Although it basically ignores the units, it is still better than Excel, which refuses to proceed when numbers are mixed with units. Great job!

1 Like