Table Master for Obsidian

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All-in-one Markdown table workflow for Obsidian. Combines the most useful pieces of three popular table plugins into a single, modern UI:

• GUI shortcuts (insert / delete / move row & column, alignment) — replaces Advanced Tables
• Visual grid editor with drag-to-select and merged-cell support — replaces Markdown Table Editor
• Merged cells rendered in both Reading view and Live Preview, fully compatible with Table Extended / MultiMarkdown syntax — replaces Table Extended

Table Extended uses the same parser hook for source rendering. Running both plugins together is not supported: Table Master will warn you on load and you should disable the others.

Features

1. Floating toolbar

When the cursor enters a GFM table the floating toolbar appears above the first row:

• Insert / delete row & column
• Move row up / down, column left / right
• Align column left / center / right
• Merge ↑ / Merge ↓ / Merge ← / Split cell
• Open the grid editor
• Format / re-pad table
• Paste a table copied from Excel / a web page (HTML or TSV is detected automatically)

2. Right-click menu

All table operations are also available from the editor's right-click menu when the cursor is inside a table.

3. Visual grid editor

Run the command Open grid editor (or click the grid button on the toolbar) to launch a Modal that displays the table as an Excel-like grid.

• Click a cell to edit it inline
• Click and drag, or Shift-click, to select a rectangular range
• Use the Merge button to merge the selected range
• Use the Split button to split the cell at the active selection
• Add / delete rows and columns
• Click Apply to write the changes back to the markdown source

4. Merged cells (MultiMarkdown / Table Extended syntax)

| Stage              | Direct Products | ATP Yields |
| ------------------ | --------------- | ---------- |
| Glycolysis         | 2 ATP           ||
| ^^                 | 2 NADH          | 3-5 ATP    |
| Pyruvate oxidation | 2 NADH          | 5 ATP      |
| **30-32** ATP                                  |||

• ^^ — the cell merges with the row directly above (rowspan)
• A trailing || extends the previous cell by one column; ||| by two, and so on (colspan)

The parser also accepts every other Table Extended construct:

• Headerless tables (block starts with the separator row)
• Table caption — [Caption text] or [Caption text][label] immediately above or below
• Multiple header rows (any rows above the separator row)
• Multiple <tbody> sections by inserting a single blank line inside the body
• Multi-line cells continued from the next row with a trailing \
• Inline Markdown (lists, code, links, embeds) is rendered inside cells in Reading view; Live Preview keeps Obsidian's native widget rendering and only applies merges.

If you prefer maximum portability, set Merged-cell output format to HTML and Table Master will write a regular <table> with colspan / rowspan attributes instead.

Live Preview applies merges by toggling rowspan / colspan attributes and hiding placeholder cells in Obsidian's existing table widget — cell text is left untouched, so the widget remains compatible with normal Obsidian editing. Multi-line cells, captions, and inline markdown re-rendering remain Reading View only.

5. Cell navigation

Tab / Shift-Tab move between cells and Enter jumps to the next row (creating one if needed). Disable in settings if it interferes with your workflow.

6. Design-from-scratch flow

Run Design new table in grid editor… to be asked for rows / columns / header presence first, then drop straight into the grid editor. Hit Apply to insert the finished table at the cursor — no need to be inside an existing table beforehand.

7. Paste tables from Excel / web

Copy a range from Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, or any web page that contains an HTML <table>, then run Paste table from clipboard (also available as a button on the floating toolbar when the cursor is in a table):

• Excel / web pages: the rich text/html clipboard payload is parsed; colspan / rowspan are preserved and translated to MultiMarkdown placeholders.
• Plain TSV: tab-separated text is parsed as a fallback (Excel always provides this).
• If the cursor is currently inside a table, the import replaces that table; otherwise the new table is inserted at the cursor.
• Pipes inside imported cells are escaped automatically so the markdown round-trips cleanly.
• Multi-line cells (Excel Alt+Enter, <br> in HTML, <p>/<div>/<li> blocks) are emitted as a single GFM row with <br> between segments. Reading view + Live Preview both upgrade those <br> tokens to real line breaks, so a multi-line cell still wraps visually while merge structure (rowspan/colspan) stays intact.

Installation

From source

git clone <repo> obsidian-table-master
cd obsidian-table-master
npm install
npm run build

Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/table-master/, then enable the plugin in Obsidian.

Hot-reload during development

npm run dev

esbuild watches src/ and rebuilds main.js on change. Combine with the hot-reload plugin for an instant feedback loop.

Commands

Every action is exposed as a command and can be bound to a hotkey from Settings → Hotkeys.

ID	Description
insert-row-above	Insert row above
insert-row-below	Insert row below
insert-col-left	Insert column to the left
insert-col-right	Insert column to the right
delete-row	Delete row
delete-col	Delete column
move-row-up	Move row up
move-row-down	Move row down
move-col-left	Move column left
move-col-right	Move column right
align-left/center/right/none	Align column
merge-up	Merge with cell above
merge-down	Merge with cell below
merge-left	Merge with cell to the left
split-cell	Split merged cell
format-table	Re-pad table cells
sort-asc / sort-desc	Sort by column
open-grid-editor	Open the visual grid editor on the table at the cursor
design-new-table	Open the grid editor with a fresh empty table and insert on apply
toggle-floating-toolbar	Show/hide the floating toolbar
new-table	Insert a new empty table
import-table-from-clipboard	Paste an Excel / web table from the clipboard

Settings

• Merged-cell output format — Extended (^^ for rowspan, trailing || for colspan; same as Table Extended) or raw HTML (colspan / rowspan attributes on a <table>)
• Show floating toolbar
• Floating toolbar position — three modes (all use position: fixed so a custom theme can't hide them; non-focused tabs auto-hide their own toolbar):
  • Pop up at click position when clicking a table (default): the toolbar stays hidden until you click inside a table, then springs up at the click point and stays there until you click outside any table.
  • Follow mouse inside table; top-left otherwise: always visible while the editor is focused. Trails the mouse pointer whenever it's hovering a table; falls back to the top-left of the editor when not.
  • Always at the editor's top-left: pinned at the top-left of the editor pane regardless of where you click.
• Enable Tab navigation
• Default column alignment
• Interface language — Auto / English / 中文

Development

npm test            # run unit tests for parser / serializer / ops
npm run build       # type-check and bundle for production

Architecture is layered so logic is decoupled from Obsidian:

src/
  table/      pure model + parser + serializer + ops (no Obsidian deps)
  editor/     editor mutations driven from the cursor
  ui/         floating toolbar, context menu, modal grid editor
  render/     reading-view post-processor + live-preview view plugin
  i18n/       en / zh dictionaries
  settings.ts settings tab
  main.ts     plugin entry

Credits

Inspired by:

• Advanced Tables by Tony Grosinger
• Markdown Table Editor by Ivan Tikhonov
• Table Extended by Zhou Hua

All three are MIT-licensed; this plugin is also MIT.