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I have a table like this:
| Verse No | Verse |
| | <10> |
| 1 | line1 li=> |
| 2 | line2 li=> |
I would like to view it as
| Verse No | Verse |
| | <10> |
| 1 | line1 line |
| | 1 line1 |
| 2 | line2 line |
| | 2 line2 |
I am aware of C-c ` but that's not enough, I want to see all text simultaneously. Read only is OK if need be.
org-mode has 2 table formats, the default org-table and the other is table.el.
Cell wrapping is available for tables in table.el format.
Try this
Remove the extra row with <10> so your table will look similar to the example below:
| Verse No | Verse |
| 1 | Line1 Line1 Line1 |
| 2 | Line2 Line2 Line2 |
Tip: Add a blank line above and below the table. The blank lines should prevent a bug when converting the table with C-c ~. Thanks to @ComproPrasad for troubleshooting and providing the workaround.
Place your cursor, a.k.a the point, inside updated table then type C-c ~ and answer y. The updated table should look similar to example below:
+----------+-------------------+
| Verse No | Verse |
+----------+-------------------+
| 1 | Line1 Line1 Line1 |
+----------+-------------------+
| 2 | Line2 Line2 Line2 |
+----------+-------------------+
Place your cursor inside updated table then type C-c ' and a new window or frame will appear.
Type M-x t-r-t and each table cell should be highlighted.
Place your cursor inside second column and type C-c C-c < until the column is the desired width.
Tip: Use the universal argument key binding C-u to quickly repeat this step. For example, If your cell is 500 characters and you want to adjust the width to 10 characters do C-u 490 C-c C-c < which will repeat C-c C-c < command 490 times.
Type C-c ' to finish editing table. These steps should leave you with a similar to the example below:
+----------+------+
| Verse No | Verse|
+----------+------+
| 1 |Line1 |
| |Line1 |
| |Line1 |
+----------+------+
| 2 |Line2 |
| |Line2 |
| |Line2 |
+----------+------+
Thanks for asking your question!
Hope that helped!
This answer tested using:
emacs version: GNU Emacs 25.2.1 (x86_64-unknown-cygwin, GTK+ Version 3.22.10)
org version: Org mode version 9.1.2
t-r-t shorthand for another command? I've found that when dealing with tables that have text with embedded links, after step 3, only the column headings are selected, and I need a way to select each table cell, as in step 4. However, I don't know what step 4 is actually referring to, since M-x t-r-t shows nothing for me with org-mode 9.1.9
C-c ', I'm not sure there are any default key bindings in org for table.el. I rarely use table.el because the format lacks many features compared to org-table. For example, AFAIK table.el tables can't be passed to src blocks. Is there a specific reason why you want use table.el besides column wrapping?
Jun 4, 2020 at 17:08
Adjust Column Width with Wrap Around
Here is a solution adapted for org-mode 9.1.13, Spacemacs (0.200.13), emacs 26.1 for convenience.
Starting with the following content at a buffer in org-mode:
| Verse No | Verse |
| 1 | Line1 Line1 Line1 |
| 2 | Line2 Line2 Line2 |
Note that you must leave a NEWLINE on top of the above table to avoid the bug of table.el.
C-c ~.+----------+-------------------+
| Verse No | Verse |
+----------+-------------------+
| 1 | Line1 Line1 Line1 |
+----------+-------------------+
| 2 | Line2 Line2 Line2 |
+----------+-------------------+
SPC u 10 SPC SPC table-narrow-cell.+----------+---------+
| Verse No | Verse |
+----------+---------+
| 1 | Line1 |
| |Line1 |
| |Line1 |
+----------+---------+
| 2 | Line2 |
| |Line2 |
| |Line2 |
+----------+---------+
C-c ~.
SPC u 10 is not required. 10 auto-prefaces it to C-u 10- (Emacs 27.0.50, Spacemacs 9.0.)
Once you follow along the accepted answer and fixed the size of a long column in an existing table, toggling table-fixed-width-mode by M-x table-fixed-width-mode seems to do the trick of automatically wrapping (future) long lines of text in a column in table edit mode. You enter table edit mode by keying C-c '
Tested on: Emacs 25.2.2, Org-Mode 9.1.6
After trying tabel.el, as well as two MacOS apps called TableFlip and MarkupTable, I decided the best solution for me is to simply edit the table in Excel or Google Sheets, then copy-paste the contents onto this site to convert to org-mode table format:
https://tabletomarkdown.com/convert-spreadsheet-to-markdown/
