Create a table without a header in Markdown

Question

Is it possible to create a table without a header in Markdown?

The HTML would look like this:

<table>
<tr>
    <td>Key 1</td>
    <td>Value 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>Key 2</td>
    <td>Value 2</td>
</tr>
</table>

score 155 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 14 '19 at 13:33

Most Markdown parsers don't support tables without headers. That means the separation line for headers is mandatory.

Parsers that do not support tables without headers

multimarkdown
Maruku: A popular implementation in Ruby
byword: "All tables must begin with one or more rows of headers"
PHP Markdown Extra "second line contains a mandatory separator line between the headers and the content"
RDiscount Uses PHP Markdown Extra syntax.
GitHub Flavoured Markdown
Parsedown: A parser in PHP (used e.g. in Laravel emails)

Parsers that do support tables without headers.

Kramdown: A parser in Ruby
Text::MultiMarkdown: Perl CPAN module.
MultiMarkdown: Windows application.
ParseDown Extra: A parser in PHP.
Pandoc: A document converter for the command line written in Haskell (supports header-less tables via its simple_tables and multiline_tables extensions)
Flexmark: A parser in Java.

CSS solution

If you're able to change the CSS of the HTML output you can however leverage the :empty pseudo class to hide an empty header and make it look like there is no header at all.

More on CSS solution: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12023771/hide-empty-cells-in-table — Vadzim, Aug 26 '16 at 20:24
`:empty` doesn't help because if you only hide the `` it doesn't look right; you have to hide the whole `` or even the entire ``. — Ron Inbar, Nov 18 '20 at 09:18

score 149 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:22

149

If you don't mind wasting a line by leaving it empty, consider the following hack (it is a hack, and use this only if you don't like adding any additional plugins).

|   |   |
|---|---|
|__Bold Key__| Value1 |
| Normal Key | Value2 |


Bold Key	Value1
Normal Key	Value2

To view how the above one could look, copy the above and visit https://stackedit.io/app

It worked with GitLab/GitHub's Markdown implementations.

edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:22

philipxy

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answered Oct 16 '14 at 07:09

Thamme Gowda

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2

What implementation does that work with? It doesn't work with Perl's Text::MultiMarkdown but I think it might work with some PHP MultiMarkdown implementations. – RedGrittyBrick Feb 05 '15 at 16:41
2

It worked with gitlab/github's markdown implementations. I am not sure about perl's Text::MultiMarkdown – Thamme Gowda Feb 06 '15 at 05:16
43

This will create an empty table header and an empty row. – Gajus Dec 29 '15 at 00:25
1

This actually works great with `pandoc` markdown to pdf. – Alex Baranowski Jan 25 '19 at 14:35
1

Thanks! This works with Laravel 5.8 (multi) markdown as well. No headers are visible - only a line. Looks like a divider, which may can be removed using some CSS in the theme. – checker284 Jun 25 '19 at 18:43
This works well in the "Markdown Viewer" extension in Google Chrome. – Gabriel Staples Jan 18 '22 at 05:22
doesn't seem to work in mkdocs – Sinaesthetic Apr 28 '22 at 21:32

score 39 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:21

39

Universal Solution

Many of the suggestions unfortunately do not work for all Markdown viewers/editors, for instance, the popular Markdown Viewer Chrome extension, but they do work with iA Writer.

What does seem to work across both of these popular programs (and might work for your particular application) is to use HTML comment blocks (''):

| <!-- -->    | <!-- -->    |
|-------------|-------------|
| Foo         | Bar         |


Foo	Bar

Like some of the earlier suggestions stated, this does add an empty header row in your Markdown viewer/editor. In iA Writer, it's aesthetically small enough that it doesn't get in my way too much.

edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:21

philipxy

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answered Nov 05 '18 at 22:51

Tony Barganski

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This completely defats the point of using Markdown, as when viewed as text-only, the comments will be stripped and the columns won't even align anymore. – hackel May 03 '20 at 05:50
3

I think @hackel misunderstood. This does not align the columns using fixed widths. Rather, it gives a nice workaround to have valid but empty column headers. It was a great workaround in my situation. The table still rendered as intended/expected; it simply had no header row. – mdahlman May 11 '20 at 20:32
2

Nice, yet [this really isn't a **universal** solution](https://babelmark.github.io/?text=%7C+%3C!--+--%3E++++%7C+%3C!--+--%3E++++%7C%0A%7C-------------%7C-------------%7C%0A%7C+Foo+++++++++%7C+Bar+++++++++%7C) – Ulysse BN Apr 19 '21 at 07:41
1

This will create an empty table header and an empty row. – 41 72 6c Jun 30 '21 at 12:49
@Tony Isn't it better to just leave the header cells empty? – user90726 Aug 01 '21 at 07:57
@UlysseBN Could you point me which Markdown implementations from the link you provided fail to parse this syntax? – user90726 Aug 01 '21 at 07:59
@jsv there 20 failing implementations nowadays, but this may change, just click the link! – Ulysse BN Aug 01 '21 at 08:37
Doesn't work for me (in github issues) – theking2 Jan 25 '22 at 22:28
@theking2 That's odd. I just tried it on github issues and works for me. – Tony Barganski Feb 04 '22 at 13:26
1

@TonyBarganski I must have missed a typo. You are right it does work. And actually without the `` in the header line. Leaving empty spaces – theking2 Feb 10 '22 at 15:52
An __Universal Solution__ that doesn't work with PDF... – Marc Le Bihan May 03 '22 at 05:36
@MarcLeBihan I haven't had any issues with PDFs. What are you using to generate your PDF? – Tony Barganski May 04 '22 at 07:12

score 21 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 01 '19 at 12:48

21

I got this working with Bitbucket's Markdown by using a empty link:

[]()  | 
------|------
Row 1 | row 2

edited Sep 01 '19 at 12:48

Peter Mortensen

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answered Mar 15 '16 at 15:19

Stuart Campbell

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Will also prompt an empty header line. At least its only half the height as an normal line. Worked for me as Hack in github too – Londane Jul 12 '16 at 20:49
This hack worked for me when writing documentation in Insomnia. Still creates a header line, but it's a lot shorter than if I put text in there. Thanks! – jkmartindale Apr 02 '18 at 20:25
Brilliant! I still see a little vertical space with Github Markdown, but it's better than before. – Keith Bennett Oct 01 '19 at 12:14

score 16 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:17

16

At least for the GitHub Flavoured Markdown, you can give the illusion by making all the non‑header row entries bold with the regular __ or ** formatting:

|Regular | text | in header | turns bold |
|-|-|-|-|
| __So__ | __bold__ | __all__ | __table entries__ |
| __and__ | __it looks__ | __like a__ | __"headerless table"__ |

Regular	text	in header	turns bold
So	bold	all	table entries
and	it looks	like a	"headerless table"

edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:17

philipxy

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answered Jul 27 '18 at 20:18

TT--

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I was looking for something that'd work in GFM and this hack is a creative one! – Mrchief Jun 29 '19 at 15:03
There's a problem when rendered tables have a different color for header row (e.g. StackExchange). – Ruslan Apr 17 '21 at 12:19
By default, the header texts are center aligned, you may want to align them to the left if you don't want the header to standout. In your second line, change it to `|:-|:-|:-|:-|` – NearHuscarl Apr 28 '22 at 11:11

RedGrittyBrick · Answer 6 · 2018-09-30T07:57:23.993

9

Omitting the header above the divider produces a headerless table in at least Perl Text::MultiMarkdown and in FletcherPenney MultiMarkdown

|-------------|--------|
|**Name:**    |John Doe|
|**Position:**|CEO     |

See PHP Markdown feature request

Empty headers in PHP Parsedown produce tables with empty headers that are usually invisible (depending on your CSS) and so look like headerless tables.

|     |     |
|-----|-----|
|Foo  |37   |
|Bar  |101  |

edited Sep 30 '18 at 07:57

answered Feb 05 '15 at 17:06

RedGrittyBrick

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About the use of Parsedown, actually the header is still here, just check the HTML. If you have a CSS padding on cells you will see the header cells. But I guess that `table th:empty { padding: 0; }` would fix that. – AymDev Sep 15 '18 at 15:09
All of these is now included in [adius' answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/17543474/7009806). – Olivier Mar 20 '23 at 07:51

Manngo · Answer 7 · 2022-03-05T09:37:13.593

8

You may be able to hide a heading if you can add the following CSS:

<style>
    th {
        display: none;
    }
</style>

This is a bit heavy-handed and doesn’t distinguish between tables, but it may do for a simple task.

Update

HTML output varies between Markdown editors, but if the table includes a thead element, you can target the empty header cells more specifically with:

thead th:empty {
    border: thin solid red !important;
    display: none;
}

This works if your header row contains no visible content. Spaces between the bars are OK.

edited Mar 05 '22 at 09:37

answered Sep 29 '19 at 06:34

Manngo

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The only CSS trick that works for me for some reason (I'm using VNote with the Markdown-it renderer). None of the solutions given here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12023771/hide-empty-cells-in-table worked. – what the Jul 09 '20 at 13:09

score 6 · Answer 8 · edited Sep 01 '19 at 12:50

6

The following works well for me in GitHub. The first row is no longer bolded as it is not a header:

<table align="center">
    <tr>
        <td align="center"><img src="docs/img1.png?raw=true" alt="some text"></td>
        <td align="center">Some other text</td>
        <td align="center">More text</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td align="center"><img src="docs/img2.png?raw=true" alt="some text"></td>
        <td align="center">Some other text 2</td>
        <td align="center">More text 2</td>
    </tr>
</table>

Check a sample HTML table without a header here.

edited Sep 01 '19 at 12:50

Peter Mortensen

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answered Sep 05 '16 at 00:49

Daniel

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This is just what the questioner said they didn't want. – Neil Mayhew Dec 11 '18 at 22:51
HTML tables don't seem to work in Bitbucket (https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Bitbucket-questions/html-table-in-readme-does-not-render-as-table/qaq-p/766135) - it displays the HTML itself rather than rendering a table. – jsaven Jul 02 '19 at 08:16

score 4 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 09 '13 at 00:52

4

$ cat foo.md
Key 1 | Value 1
Key 2 | Value 2

$ kramdown foo.md
<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>Key 1</td>
      <td>Value 1</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Key 2</td>
      <td>Value 2</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

answered Jul 09 '13 at 00:52

Zombo

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This seems not to work with https://github.com/chjj/marked . Is there a reference, in which I can look up if this is even the expected behavior? – adius Jul 09 '13 at 07:50

score 2 · Answer 10 · edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:18

2

I use <span> in the first column header:

 <span> |
---     |    ---
Value   |  Value
Value   |  Value

It creates an empty header with border, but with 1/2 the size.


Value
Value

edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:18

philipxy

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answered Aug 05 '18 at 08:09

Long-John Silver

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score 1 · Answer 11 · edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:22

1

what works in GitHub issue editor is

&nbsp; |&nbsp;
------ | ---
Foo    | Bar

But it does show an empty header


Foo	Bar

edited Apr 16 '23 at 21:22

philipxy

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answered Feb 10 '22 at 15:57

theking2

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As someone with a quasi-Markdown parser that does tables I'm wondering if I should "special case" the first row being non-breaking space cells - and just suppress the header row. My target (PowerPoint slides) would happily support a headerless table. Or would this be considered a deviation too far? (I already have a section in the manual for such deviations - so could add this as "some other parsers might not...") – Martin Packer Dec 24 '22 at 12:10

Aleksandr · Answer 12 · 2022-11-09T14:06:19.143

1

<style>
    .headerless th {
        display: none;
    }
</style>

<div class="headerless">

| | |
|---|---|
|Some |table |
| WITHOUT | header |
</div>

|This|is|
|---|---|
|Some |table |
| WITH |header |

edited Nov 09 '22 at 14:06

answered Nov 09 '22 at 14:00

Aleksandr

11
2

Remember that Stack Overflow isn't just intended to solve the immediate problem, but also to help future readers find solutions to similar problems, which requires understanding the underlying code. This is especially important for members of our community who are beginners, and not familiar with the syntax. Given that, **can you [edit] your answer to include an explanation of what you're doing** and why you believe it is the best approach? – Jeremy Caney Nov 15 '22 at 00:34

Create a table without a header in Markdown

12 Answers12

Parsers that do not support tables without headers

Parsers that do support tables without headers.

CSS solution

Universal Solution

Linked