← Overview

Tables in GitHub-Flavored Markdown (GFM) — the same syntax Obsidian renders in reading view.

How you write it in Obsidian

| Name  | Value |
|:------|------:|
| Alpha | 1     |
| Beta  | 2     |

• The first row is the column headers.
• The second row is the separator — it is required; it is what makes the block a table.
• The colons in the separator set the alignment per column: :--- left, :--: centered, ---: right.
• The usual inline formatting works inside cells (bold, italic, inline code).

Giving the table a caption

Write the caption on the line directly after the table, opened with :, Table: or table: and a space. This is Pandoc's spelling, not an invention of ours.

| Material | Amount | Price |
|:---------|-------:|------:|
| Screws   |    100 |   5 % |
| Wood     |      2 |  10 % |
table: Overview of the research design

The caption also gives the table a name you can point at, so the table appears in the List of Tables and a cross-reference can reach it — see Links & cross-references.

• A blank line between table and caption is allowed but not needed. Without one the two sit closer together in Obsidian's preview.
• The position is what counts, not the pattern. A line starting with : anywhere else stays ordinary text. Only a line right after a table becomes a caption.
• The caption takes the usual inline formatting: bold, italic, links, citations.
• No caption means no caption line in the output either. A table without one looks exactly as it always did.

What Obsitex generates

A tabular environment. The exact look is driven by your Document Design Settings (DDS) — whether horizontal rules (\hline) and vertical rules (|) are drawn, the default alignment, and the surrounding environment.

\begin{table}[!htbp]
 \centering
 \begin{tabular}{|l|r|}
 \hline
Name & Value \\
\hline
Alpha & 1 \\
\hline
Beta & 2 \\
\hline
 \end{tabular}
\end{table}

With a caption, two more lines appear — the caption itself and the name it can be referred to by: