HTML - <td>

The Table cell HTML element (<td>) defines a cell of a table that contains data. It participates in the table model.

Example

Please see the <table> page for examples on <td>.

Description  

The Table cell HTML element (<td>) defines a cell of a table that contains data. It participates in the table model.

Content categories None.
Permitted content Flow content.
Tag omission The start tag is mandatory.
The end tag may be omitted, if it is immediately followed by a <th> or <td> element or if there are no more data in its parent element.
Permitted parent elements A <tr> element.
Normative document HTML5, section 4.9.9 (HTML4.01, section 11.2.6)

Attributes

Includes the Global Attributes.

NameVersionDescription
abbr This attribute contains a short abbreviated description of the content of the cell. Some user-agents, such as speech readers, may present this description before the content itself.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard: instead either consider starting the cell content by an independent abbreviated content itself or use the abbreviated content as the cell content and use the long content as the description of the cell by putting it in the title attribute.
align HTML5 This enumerated attribute specifies how horizontal alignment of each cell content will be handled. Possible values are:
  • left, aligning the content to the left of the cell
  • center, centering the content in the cell
  • right, aligning the content to the right of the cell
  • justify, inserting spaces into the textual content so that the content is justified in the cell
  • char, aligning the textual content on a special character with a minimal offset, defined by the char and charoff attributes Unimplemented (see bug 2212).

If this attribute is not set, the left value is assumed.

Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (not supported) in the latest standard.
  • To achieve the same effect as the left, center, right, or justify values, use the CSS text-align property on it.
  • To achieve the same effect as the char value, in CSS3, you can use the value of the char as the value of the text-align property Unimplemented.
axis HTML5 This attribute contains a list of space-separated strings. Each string is the ID of a group of cells that this header applies to.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard: instead use the scope attribute.
bgcolor This attribute defines the background color of each cell of the column. It is one of the 6-digit hexadecimal codes as defined in sRGB, prefixed by a '#'. One of the sixteen predefined color strings may be used:
  black = "#000000"   green = "#008000"
  silver = "#C0C0C0"   lime = "#00FF00"
  gray = "#808080"   olive = "#808000"
  white = "#FFFFFF"   yellow = "#FFFF00"
  maroon = "#800000"   navy = "#000080"
  red = "#FF0000"   blue = "#0000FF"
  purple = "#800080"   teal = "#008080"
  fuchsia = "#FF00FF"   aqua = "#00FFFF"
Usage note: Do not use this attribute, as it is non-standard and only implemented in some versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer: the <td> element should be styled using CSS. To give a similar effect to the bgcolor attribute, use the CSS property background-color instead.
char HTML5 This attribute is used to set the character to align the cells in a column. Typical values for this include a period (.) when attempting to align numbers or monetary values. If align is not set to char, this attribute is ignored.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard. To achieve the same effect as the char, in CSS3, you can use the character set using the char attribute as the value of the text-align property Unimplemented.
charoff HTML5 This attribute is used to indicate the number of characters to offset the column data from the alignment characters specified by the char attribute.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard.
colspan This attribute contains a non-negative integer value that indicates for how many columns the cell extends. Its default value is 1; if its value is set to 0, it extends until the end of the <colgroup>, even if implicitly defined, that the cell belongs to. Values higher than 1000 will be considered as incorrect and will be set to the default value (1).
Note: In HTML5 this attribute only accepts values greater than zero since it must not be used to overlap cells. Besides, Firefox is the only browser to support the 0 value as defined in the HTML 4.01 specification.
headers This attribute contains a list of space-separated strings, each corresponding to the id attribute of the <th> elements that apply to this element.
rowspan This attribute contains a non-negative integer value that indicates for how many rows the cell extends. Its default value is 1; if its value is set to 0, it extends until the end of the table section (<thead>, <tbody>, <tfoot>, even if implicitly defined, that the cell belongs to. Values higher than 65534 are clipped down to 65534.
scope HTML5  
valign HTML5 This attribute specifies the vertical alignment of the text within each row of cells of the table header. Possible values for this attribute are:
  • baseline, which will put the text as close to the bottom of the cell as it is possible, but align it on the baseline of the characters instead of the bottom of them. If characters are all of the same size, this has the same effect as bottom.
  • bottom, which will put the text as close to the bottom of the cell as it is possible
  • middle, which will center the text in the cell
  • and top, which will put the text as close to the top of the cell as it is possible.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard: instead set the CSS vertical-align property on it.
width HTML5 This attribute is used to define a recommended cell width.  Properties cellspacing and cellpadding may add additional space, and element <col> width may also have some effect. In general, if a column's width is too narrow to show a particular cell properly, it, and thus the cells in it, may be widened when displayed.
Note: Do not use this attribute in the latest standard: instead set the CSS width property.

Browser Compatibility  

Feature Chrome Firefox (Gecko) Internet Explorer Opera Safari
Basic support 1.0 1.0 (1.7 or earlier) (Yes) (Yes) (Yes)
align/valign attribute 1.0 No support[1] (Yes) (Yes) (Yes)
char/charoff attribute 1.0 No support[2] (Yes) (Yes) (Yes)
bgcolor attribute No support No support (Yes) No support No support
colspan attribute with value 0 (extend to the end of the colgroup) No support (Yes) No support No support No support
Feature Android Firefox Mobile (Gecko) IE Mobile Opera Mobile Safari Mobile
Basic support (Yes) 1.0 (1.0) (Yes) (Yes) (Yes)
align/valign attribute ? No support[1] ? ? ?
char/charoff attribute ? No support[2] ? ? ?
bgcolor attribute No support No support (Yes) No support No support

[1] This is currently not implemented in Gecko. See bug 915.

[2] This is currently not implemented in Gecko. See bug 2212.

See Also  

DOM interface

This element implements the HTMLTableDataCellElement interface.

License

© 2016 Mozilla Contributors
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-us/docs/web/html/element/td