How to specify table's height such that a vertical scroll bar appears?

Question

I have a table with many rows on my page. I would like to set table's height, say for 500px, such that if the height of the table is bigger than that, a vertical scroll bar will appear. I tried to use CSS height attribute on the table, but it doesn't work.

Answer 1

Try using the overflow CSS property. There are also separate properties to define the behaviour of just horizontal overflow (overflow-x) and vertical overflow (overflow-y).

Since you only want the vertical scroll, try this:

table {
  height: 500px;
  overflow-y: scroll;
}

---

EDIT:

Apparently <table> elements don't respect the overflow property. This appears to be because <table> elements are not rendered as display: block by default (they actually have their own display type). You can force the overflow property to work by setting the <table> element to be a block type:

table {
  display: block;
  height: 500px;
  overflow-y: scroll;
}

Note that this will cause the element to have 100% width, so if you don't want it to take up the entire horizontal width of the containing element, you need to specify an explicit width for the element as well.

Answer 2

You need to wrap the table inside another element and set the height of that element. Example with inline css:

<div style="height: 500px; overflow: auto;">
 <table>
 </table>
</div>

Answer 3

None of those solutions worked. However, I grabbed the flex solution of Bootstrap and it worked

table, td {
  border: 1px solid black;
}
th {
  border-left: 1px solid black;
}

table {
  border-collapse: collapse;
  width: 100%;
}

table {
    display: flex;
    flex-flow: column;
    width: 100%;
    height: 400px;
    
}

thead {
    padding-right: 13px;
    flex: 0 0 auto;
}

tbody {
    flex: 1 1 auto;
    display: block;
    overflow-y: auto;
    overflow-x: hidden;
}

tr {
    width: 100%;
    display: table;
    table-layout: fixed;
}

<table>
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>Firstname</th>
    <th>Lastname</th>
    <th>Savings</th>
  </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
  <tr>
    <td>Peter</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$100</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Lois</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$150</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Joe</td>
    <td>Swanson</td>
    <td>$300</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cleveland</td>
    <td>Brown</td>
    <td>$250</td>
  </tr>
    <tr>
    <td>Peter</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$100</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Lois</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$150</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Joe</td>
    <td>Swanson</td>
    <td>$300</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cleveland</td>
    <td>Brown</td>
    <td>$250</td>
  </tr>
    <tr>
    <td>Peter</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$100</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Lois</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$150</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Joe</td>
    <td>Swanson</td>
    <td>$300</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cleveland</td>
    <td>Brown</td>
    <td>$250</td>
  </tr>
    <tr>
    <td>Peter</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$100</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Lois</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$150</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Joe</td>
    <td>Swanson</td>
    <td>$300</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cleveland</td>
    <td>Brown</td>
    <td>$250</td>
  </tr>
    <tr>
    <td>Peter</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$100</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Lois</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$150</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Joe</td>
    <td>Swanson</td>
    <td>$300</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cleveland</td>
    <td>Brown</td>
    <td>$250</td>
  </tr>
    <tr>
    <td>Peter</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$100</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Lois</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$150</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Joe</td>
    <td>Swanson</td>
    <td>$300</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cleveland</td>
    <td>Brown</td>
    <td>$250</td>
  </tr>
    <tr>
    <td>Peter</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$100</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Lois</td>
    <td>Griffin</td>
    <td>$150</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Joe</td>
    <td>Swanson</td>
    <td>$300</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cleveland</td>
    <td>Brown</td>
    <td>$250</td>
  </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Answer 4

This CSS also shows a fixed height HTML table. It sets the height of the HTML tbody to 400 pixels and the HTML tbody scrolls when the it is larger, retaining the HTML thead as a non-scrolling element.

In addition, each th cell in the heading and each td cell the body should be styled for the desired fixed width.

#the-table {
  display: block;
  background: white; /* optional */
}

#the-table thead {
  text-align: left; /* optional */
}

#the-table tbody {
  display: block;
  max-height: 400px;
  overflow-y: scroll;
}

Answer 5

to set the height of table, you need to first set css property "display: block" then you can add "width/height" properties. I find this Mozilla Article a very good resource to learn how to style tables : Link