Combining Table Cells with colspan and rowspan

When you use a table format, sometimes you may want to merge some of the cells vertically or horizontally. In this section, we'll explain how to do it.

Combine table cells horizontally

Use the colspan attribute to combine table cells horizontally. Set a number of columns to be combined as an attribute value.

For example, to combine the first two cells of the second row like shown in the illustration below, add colspan="2" as the attribute value of the first <td> element under the second <tr> element.

Combine table cells vertically

Use rowspan attribute to combine table cells vertically. Set a number of rows to be combined as an attribute value.

For example, to combine the cells in the second and third row of the first column like shown in the illustration below, add rowspan="2" as the attribute value of the first <td> element under the second <tr> element.

Practice

Objective:
Merge table cells in HTML

1. Add code to create a table in the HTML file

Open chapter5.html with VS Code
Add the following code before the <style> tag created in the previous practice

chapter5.html

<h3>2. Merge cells horizontally</h3>
<table>
  <tr>
    <th>header</th>
    <th>header</th>
    <th>header</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td colspan="2">item</td>
    <td>item</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>item</td>
    <td>item</td>
    <td>item</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<h3>3. Merge cells vertically</h3>
<table>
  <tr>
    <th>header</th>
    <th>header</th>
    <th>header</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td rowspan="2">item</td>
    <td>item</td>
    <td>item</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>item</td>
    <td>item</td>
  </tr>
</table>