Tables

Tables are a great way of providing visually structured information without the need for a full database functionality.

Capacities' tables are designed to seamlessly blend into your notes, but with the added flexibility of becoming full objects if you need.

Creating a table

Similar to other blocks, tables can be created by typing + table or / table.

You will get a basic table created for you with 2 columns and 3 rows.

From here, feel free to change the dimensions. You can click and drag the + buttons that appear to the right of your columns, or underneath your rows.

If you want to adjust both columns and rows at the same time, you can click and drag the + in the bottom right corner of your table.

You can also click and drag columns and rows to reorder them too.

You can create header columns or rows if that suits your use-case. You do this by clicking on the "option menu" button. This gives you a colored-in background and bold text, to differentiate the header row/columns from the cells beneath them.

Pasting in markdown tables

If you have a standard-style markdown table from a different tool, you will be able to paste this into Capacities and it will transform into the Capacities-style tables.

Navigating your table

You can use the arrow keys to navigate through cells in your table.

You can Shift + Click to highlight cells and you can edit the selection from there, such as bulk adding bold or italic formatting to your cells.

Alternatively you can use Shift and your arrows to edit the size of the selection.

You can use Backspace to clear content from cell and Cmd + Backspace (Mac) or Ctrl + Backspace (Windows) to delete whole rows and columns.

Shortcuts

There are also some built in shortcuts:

• Shift + Enter to add a line break within the same cell
• Cmd + Enter on Mac or Ctrl + Enter on Windows to create a new row
• Cmd + Shift + Enter on Mac or Ctrl + Shift + Enter on Windows to create a new column
• If you have selected a row or a column, use Option on Mac or Alt on Windows with your arrows to move the rows or columns to another position.

The block shortcuts used in text editing also work in tables.

Using your table

Formatting text

The content of your cells works like text blocks you use elsewhere.

You will recognize the menu that pops up when you highlight your text: here you can apply text formatting, link to external content, or link to objects.

Formatting the cells

To style the background of your cells, highlight them with Shift + arrows, navigate to the action panel and choose your style from there.

The action panel lets you

• align your text
• color the cells
• bulk add text styles (such as bold or italic)
• assign number formatting

If you decide you no longer want a style you previously applied, you can open the option menu and click 'clear cell styles'.

Reordering cells

You might want to manually reorder cells, you can do that by clicking and dragging.

Or you might want to sort cells in ascending/descending order. You can do this by clicking on the column menu and choosing the right option for you.

Linking

Tables are designed to give you another useful view when working with your notes. To make this most effective, it's important that you can link to other objects from your cells.

You can do this with the usual @ or [[]] shortcuts.

Turning into objects

You might have some tables that are particularly important or useful for use in multiple objects. For these cases, you can turn your table blocks into table objects.

All your table objects will be found in the built-in table object type. Here you can review all the tables you've saved, give them titles, tags, or organize them into collections. Tables can blend in seamlessly with the existing organizational patterns you might have set up.

You can of course embed this table in your other objects.

To turn a table into an object, open the option menu and click 'turn into object'.

Table objects also have a blocks property, meaning you can add notes to the table specifically.

Export

As tables are blocks just like any other, they will appear when you export objects too.

If you just want to export the table, you can export it as CSV from the table option menu:

If you want to a video introduction to tables, check out this video: