Emacs/docs/latest/emacs/Text-Based-Tables

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25.15 Editing Text-based Tables

The table package provides commands to easily edit text-based tables. Here is an example of what such a table looks like:

+-----------------+--------------------------------+-----------------+
|     Command     |          Description           |   Key Binding   |
+-----------------+--------------------------------+-----------------+
|  forward-char   |Move point right N characters   |       C-f       |
|                 |(left if N is negative).        |                 |
|                 |                                |                 |
+-----------------+--------------------------------+-----------------+
|  backward-char  |Move point left N characters    |       C-b       |
|                 |(right if N is negative).       |                 |
|                 |                                |                 |
+-----------------+--------------------------------+-----------------+

When Emacs recognizes such a stretch of text as a table (see Table Recognition), editing the contents of each table cell will automatically resize the table, whenever the contents become too large to fit in the cell. You can use the commands defined in the following sections for navigating and editing the table layout.

Type M-x table-fixed-width-mode to toggle the automatic table resizing feature.

• Table Definition		What is a text based table.
• Table Creation		How to create a table.
• Table Recognition		How to activate and deactivate tables.
• Cell Commands		Cell-oriented commands in a table.
• Cell Justification		Justifying cell contents.
• Table Rows and Columns		Inserting and deleting rows and columns.
• Table Conversion		Converting between plain text and tables.
• Table Misc		Table miscellany.