<td>: The Table Data Cell element

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

Content categories Sectioning root.
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 parents A <tr> element.
Implicit ARIA role cell if a descendant of a <table> element
Permitted ARIA roles Any
DOM interface HTMLTableCellElement

Attributes

This element includes the global attributes.

colspan

This attribute contains a non-negative integer value that indicates for how many columns the cell extends. Its default value is 1. Values higher than 1000 will be considered as incorrect and will be set to the default value (1).

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.

Deprecated attributes

abbr

This attribute contains a short abbreviated description of the cell's content. 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Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard. Alternatively, you can put the abbreviated description inside the cell and place the long content in the title attribute.

align

This enumerated attribute specifies how the cell content's horizontal alignment will be handled. Possible values are:

  • left: The content is aligned to the left of the cell.
  • center: The content is centered in the cell.
  • right: The content is aligned to the right of the cell.
  • justify (with text only): The content is stretched out inside the cell so that it covers its entire width.
  • char (with text only): The content is aligned to a character inside the <th> element with minimal offset. This character is defined by the char and charoff attributes Unimplemented (see bug 2212).

The default value when this attribute is not specified is left.

Note:

  • To achieve the same effect as the left, center, right or justify values, apply the CSS text-align property to the element.
  • To achieve the same effect as the char value, give the text-align property the same value you would use for the char. Unimplemented in CSS3.
axis

This attribute contains a list of space-separated strings. Each string is the id of a group of cells that this header applies to.

bgcolor

This attribute defines the background color of each cell in a column. It is a 6-digit hexadecimal RGB code, prefixed by a '#'. One of the predefined color keywords can also be used.

To achieve a similar effect, use the CSS background-color property.

char

The content in the cell element is aligned to a character. Typical values include a period (.) to align numbers or monetary values. If align is not set to char, this attribute is ignored.

charoff

This attribute is used to shift column data to the right of the character specified by the char attribute. Its value specifies the length of this shift.

height

This attribute is used to define a recommended cell height. Use the CSS height property instead.

scope

This enumerated attribute defines the cells that the header (defined in the <th>) element relates to. Only use this attribute with the <th> element to define the row or column for which it is a header.

valign

This attribute specifies how a text is vertically aligned inside a cell. Possible values for this attribute are:

  • baseline: Positions the text near the bottom of the cell and aligns it with the baseline of the characters instead of the bottom. If characters don't descend below the baseline, the baseline value achieves the same effect as bottom.
  • bottom: Positions the text near the bottom of the cell.
  • middle: Centers the text in the cell.
  • and top: Positions the text near the top of the cell.

To achieve a similar effect, use the CSS vertical-align property.

width

This attribute is used to define a recommended cell width. Use the CSS width property instead.

Examples

See <table> for examples on <td>.

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# the-td-element

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser