DEV Community: Olayiwola Akinnagbe

How to Make a Comparison Table (The Right Way)

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A comparison table is one of the most common structures in technical
writing, product pages, and research documents. Done well, it lets
the reader make a decision at a glance. Done poorly, it is a wall of
text in grid form that is harder to read than a list.

The structural decisions that matter most: clear header labels in
the first row, consistent values down each column, and visual
differentiation between the header row and the data rows.

The column structure should follow the comparison logic. If you are
comparing tools, the first column is the tool name, subsequent columns
are criteria. If you are comparing options for a single tool, the
first column is the criterion, subsequent columns are the options.
Do not mix these patterns in the same table.

Boolean values (yes, no, available, not available) work better
as checkmarks than as text if the export format supports them.
In PDF and PNG exports, ✓ and ✗ are cleaner than the words.

For building comparison tables quickly: use Tablesmit's Feature Matrix
template as a starting point. It gives you a pre-structured header
row and data rows that you fill in. Set column types appropriately,
apply a theme for visual hierarchy, and export to PDF or PNG.

The PNG export is particularly useful for comparison tables that will
appear in Medium posts, Notion pages, or presentations. Formats that
either do not support tables natively or render them inconsistently.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-make-a-comparison-table. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

How to Freeze a Header Row in an Online Table

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

When a table is long enough to require scrolling, the header row
disappears as you scroll down and you lose the context for what
each column contains. This is the problem that frozen header rows
solve. The header stays visible while the data rows scroll beneath it.

In HTML, this is achieved with position: sticky on the header row.
The implementation sounds simple but gets complicated in tables with
merged cells, varying column widths, and custom borders. The sticky
position needs to account for the correct top offset, the z-index
needs to be right to prevent data rows from showing through, and
the border rendering needs to stay consistent at the boundary.

In Tablesmit, the freeze header option is in the toolbar. Click it
and the header row sticks to the top of the visible table area as
you scroll through long data. The column borders stay sharp at the
boundary and merged header cells stay correctly positioned.

You can also freeze the first column using the same toolbar. This
is useful for tables where the first column is a label (a method name, a date, or a category) and you want to keep it visible while
scrolling right through metric columns.

Both can be active simultaneously: frozen header row and frozen
first column together.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-freeze-header-row-in-table. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

How to Use Find and Replace in an Online Table

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Find and replace in a table editor is one of those features that
seems minor until you need it. You have a thirty-row table and you
realize the product name in column one has a typo in twelve places.
Fixing it manually means clicking through every affected cell.

The standard browser find shortcut (Ctrl+F on Windows, Cmd+F on Mac) opens the browser's find bar, which searches the visible text on
the page but cannot replace values in table cells.

Tablesmit intercepts the find shortcut and opens a table-aware find
and replace panel instead. You type the search term, type the
replacement, and either step through each match to confirm it or
replace all occurrences at once. The search is across all cells in
the table, not just the visible ones if you have scrolled.

Ctrl+H opens the replace panel directly.

This is one of those features that is easy to overlook because it
uses a keyboard shortcut you already know from other applications.
The behavior is table-aware. It finds matches inside cell values, not just in the visible text, which is the important difference
from the browser's built-in find.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-find-and-replace-in-table. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

How to Auto-Sum a Column in an Online Table Builder

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Auto-sum in a table builder sounds like it belongs in a spreadsheet,
but there is a specific use case that comes up constantly: you have
a results table or a data table with a numeric column, and you need
a total row at the bottom that adds up cleanly in the export.

Doing this manually is tedious. You calculate the sum, type it in,
and then rebuild it every time a value in the column changes. It is
also easy to get wrong when numbers involve decimal precision.

In Tablesmit, auto-sum works through column types. When you set a
column to Number, Currency, or Percentage, you can enable auto-sum
for that column from the column header menu. Tablesmit calculates
the sum of all values in the column and places it in a styled total
row at the bottom of the table.

The total carries through to every export format. In the PDF it
appears as a distinct row with clear formatting. In the Excel export
it appears as a value in the last row. In the LaTeX export it
appears as a final row before the closing \hline.

When any value in the column changes, the total updates automatically.
You do not manage it. You just build the table and the total stays
correct.

This is particularly useful for financial tables, experiment results
tables, and any analytical summary where the reader expects to see
the column total at a glance.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-auto-sum-columns-table. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

How to Add a Table to a Medium Post (Three Workarounds That Work)

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Medium does not support native tables. This is a known limitation
that has been requested for years and has not been addressed.

There are three workarounds that actually work.

The first is the PNG method. Build your table in a tool that exports
clean images, export as PNG, and embed it as an image in Medium.
This works because Medium handles images cleanly across desktop,
tablet, and mobile. The table looks exactly as you built it. The
downside is that it is not interactive: readers cannot copy cells.
For most content purposes this does not matter.

The second is the GitHub Gist method. Create a Gist with a .html
filename, write your table in HTML, and paste the Gist URL into
Medium on its own line. Medium detects it as a Gist and embeds it.
The result looks like a code block rather than a document table,
which works for technical audiences and not for general readers.

The third is the Notion embed method. Make a Notion page public,
paste the share URL into Medium. Medium's Notion embed support is
inconsistent and may not work depending on when you test it.

For most writers, the PNG method is the right answer.

I built Tablesmit specifically for this workflow. You build the
table in the browser, export as PNG in one click, and drop it into
Medium. It takes about two minutes from start to finish.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-add-table-to-medium-post. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

Free Online Table Makers Compared: What They Get Right and Wrong

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:48:00 +0000

I built a table builder after spending too long evaluating every free
alternative I could find. Here is what I found.

Tables Generator is the most well-known option. It is functional and
supports LaTeX output, but the column type control is basic, the
interface feels dated, and the export options are limited compared
to what you actually need for professional documents.

Markdown Tables Generator does one thing and does it well: it
generates Markdown table syntax. If that is all you need, use it.
If you need a PDF or an Excel file, it is not the right tool.

Google Sheets is not a table builder but everyone uses it as one.
The data entry is fast and the collaboration is good, but the PDF
export looks like a spreadsheet and the LaTeX export requires a
third-party add-on that rarely produces clean output.

Notion tables are good for internal reference but the export options
are limited. There is no native LaTeX export and the PDF output
includes Notion's styling, not a clean document table.

What none of them do well: clean multi-format export from a tool
designed specifically for building one formatted table in a document.
That gap is what I built Tablesmit to fill.

Tablesmit supports drag-to-resize, merge cells, column types, table
captions, and export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG and JPEG. No
account. Works offline. MIT licensed.

tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/free-online-table-makers-compared. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

How to Add Borders to a Table Online

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Table borders are one of those things that look simple and get
complicated fast. In HTML, you are choosing between border-collapse,
border-spacing, and individual cell borders. In Word, the border
panel has fourteen options most people never use. In LaTeX, you
are adding | characters to the column specification and \hline
commands between rows.

If you just need a clean bordered table without touching any of
that, the simplest approach is to build the table in a dedicated
tool, format it visually, and export to the format you need.

In Tablesmit, borders are handled through the theme system. The
default theme uses clean horizontal rules, a full border on the
header row and lighter borders between data rows, which is the
standard format for professional document tables. You can switch
themes in the toolbar to change the border style across the entire
table at once.

When you export to PDF, the borders render exactly as they appear
in the editor. When you export to LaTeX, Tablesmit generates
\hline commands at the appropriate positions. When you export to
PNG, the borders are pixel-sharp.

You do not need to configure borders individually. Set your theme,
build your table, and export.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-add-table-borders-online. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

How to Copy a Table from Excel to the Web Without Rebuilding It

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:34:00 +0000

Copying a table from Excel to a web tool should be simple. In practice
it is usually one of three bad outcomes: you get tab-separated text
in a single cell, you get a screenshot that cannot be edited, or you
spend twenty minutes rebuilding the table row by row.

The reason most tools fail here is that they ignore how Excel writes
to the clipboard. When you copy a range of cells in Excel, the clipboard
holds two formats simultaneously: a formatted HTML version and a
tab-separated plain text version. Most web tools read only the plain text
and dump it into a single input instead of reconstructing the table.

Tablesmit reads the tab-separated format and reconstructs the full table
automatically. Here is the workflow:

Select your range in Excel including the header row. Copy with Ctrl+C
on Windows or Cmd+C on Mac. Open tablesmit.com and paste with Ctrl+V
anywhere on the page. The table appears with your data in the correct
cells, columns at the right widths, and headers in the first row.

From there you can resize columns by dragging, set column types for
proper formatting, add a caption, merge cells for grouped headers, and
export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG or JPEG.

The same workflow works with Google Sheets. Copy a range, paste into
Tablesmit. Sheets also writes tab-separated data to the clipboard
when you copy a selection.

Word tables work differently: Word writes HTML to the clipboard instead
of TSV. Tablesmit detects HTML tables and parses those too.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/copy-excel-table-to-web. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

How to Add a Caption to a Table (And Why It Matters for Exports)

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A table caption is a small thing that makes a large difference in
professional documents and academic papers. In a PDF, the caption
sits above or below the table and tells the reader what they are
looking at without requiring them to read the surrounding text. In
LaTeX, the caption maps to the \caption{} command inside the table
environment. In Excel, it becomes the sheet title.

Most table builders treat the caption as an afterthought: a text
field that appears in the visual preview but disappears in the export.

In Tablesmit, the caption field is a first-class part of the table.
Whatever you type in the caption field carries through to every
export format. In the PDF it appears above the table. In the LaTeX
export it maps to \caption{}. In the PNG export it appears below
the table image.

This matters particularly for researchers submitting to journals.
IEEE, ACM, and most other venues require numbered table captions in
a specific format. Building the caption into the table from the start
means you do not have to add it manually in LaTeX after export.

In Tablesmit, the caption field is in the right sidebar above the
export panel. Type your caption there and it will appear in every
format you export to.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-add-caption-to-table. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

The Best Table Tool for Researchers (And Why Most Miss the Mark)

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:13:00 +0000

If you write research papers, you have a table problem. Not because
tables are hard to build, but because every tool that builds them
makes the export step painful.

Excel is fine for the data but the PDF or LaTeX output is wrong.
Tables Generator works but the column type control is limited. Writing
LaTeX tabular by hand is accurate but slow and error-prone. Google
Sheets exported to PDF looks like a spreadsheet, not a paper table.

What researchers actually need is straightforward: build the table
in something that understands column types, and export directly to
LaTeX with correct alignment and escaped special characters. The
generated block should paste straight into the .tex file without
manual editing.

This is what the LaTeX export in Tablesmit does. You set your column
types (Text for labels, Number or Percentage for values) and the
export generates the alignment automatically. Text columns get l,
numeric columns get r. Special characters including %, $, &, _, ^,
{, and } are escaped. The caption field maps to the LaTeX caption
command. The output looks like this:

\begin{table}[h]
\centering
\caption{Your table caption}
\begin{tabular}{l r r r}
\hline
Method & Accuracy & F1 & Params \
\hline
Baseline & 78.4\% & 0.76 & 12M \
Our model & 84.1\% & 0.83 & 18M \
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

You also get PDF, Excel, CSV, PNG and JPEG exports for co-authors
and supervisors who need the table in a different format.

Tablesmit is free, open source, and works offline. No account required.
tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/best-table-tool-for-researchers. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

AI Table Generator Features Worth Actually Using

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

If you search for an AI table generator, you will find a lot of tools
that generate something vaguely table-shaped and call it done. The
output is usually wrong in ways that are annoying to fix: misaligned
columns, no column types, no export that is actually usable.

The features worth caring about in a table builder are less about AI
and more about the fundamentals: does it understand what kind of data
is in each column, does the export look right, and does it stay out
of the way while you work?

Column types are the first thing to look for. A tool that treats every
cell as a string will right-align a currency column in the output or
format 84.1 as 84.10000000001. A tool that understands column types (Text, Number, Currency, Percentage, Date) will format values correctly
and generate proper alignment in LaTeX exports automatically.

Export quality is the second thing. A PDF export that looks like a
screenshot of a spreadsheet is not useful. The output should be clean
enough to hand to a client or include in a paper without manual cleanup.
LaTeX export should generate a complete tabular environment, not just
the cell values separated by ampersands.

Smart paste is the third thing most people discover late. If you have
data in Excel or Google Sheets, you should be able to copy the cells
and paste directly into a table builder. This works because Excel writes
tab-separated data to the clipboard when you copy a range. A good table
builder reads that and reconstructs the table automatically.

I built Tablesmit with all of this in mind. It is free, open source,
and MIT licensed.

Try it at tablesmit.com.

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/ai-table-generator-features. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.

How to Resize Table Columns and Rows Online

Olayiwola Akinnagbe — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:35:00 +0000

Resizing table columns should feel immediate. You hover over the
column border, the cursor changes to a resize indicator, you drag,
and the column changes width. The columns around it adjust
predictably. Nothing else moves.

In practice this is harder to implement correctly than it sounds.
The naive approach, updating the column width on every mousemove event, causes layout recalculations on every pixel of drag movement.
On a table with many columns this produces noticeable lag, especially
on lower-powered devices.

The implementation in Tablesmit uses requestAnimationFrame with a
ghost line indicator. The ghost line, a vertical line that follows the cursor during drag, shows where the column border will land
without actually moving it. The column width only commits on mouseup.
This means the layout recalculates once, at the end of the drag,
instead of hundreds of times during it. The result is 60fps drag
performance regardless of table size.

To resize a column: hover over the right border of the column header
until the cursor changes to a horizontal resize indicator, then click
and drag. Release to commit the width.

Column widths carry through to PDF and PNG exports. The table in
the export looks exactly as it does in the editor, with the column
widths you set.

Row height is automatic based on content. Cells wrap text when the
content is longer than the column width.

Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com

This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-resize-table-columns-rows. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.