HTMLTableCellElement: colSpan property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The colSpan read-only property of the HTMLTableCellElement interface represents the number of columns this cell must span; this lets the cell occupy space across multiple columns of the table. It reflects the colspan attribute.

Value

A positive number representing the number of columns.

Note: When setting a new value, the value is clamped to the nearest strictly positive number.

Examples

This example provides two buttons to modify the column span of the first cell of the body.

HTML

html
<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Col 1</th>
      <th>Col 2</th>
      <th>Col 3</th>
      <th>Col 4</th>
      <th>Col 5</th>
      <th>Col 6</th>
      <th>Col 7</th>
      <th>Col 8</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td colspan="2">1</td>
      <td>2</td>
      <td>3</td>
      <td>4</td>
      <td>5</td>
      <td>6</td>
      <td>7</td>
      <td>8</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<button id="increase">Increase colspan</button>
<button id="decrease">Decrease colspan</button>
<div>The first cell spans <output>2</output> column(s).</div>

JavaScript

js
// Obtain relevant interface elements
const cell = document.querySelectorAll("tbody tr td")[0];
const output = document.querySelectorAll("output")[0];

const increaseButton = document.getElementById("increase");
const decreaseButton = document.getElementById("decrease");

increaseButton.addEventListener("click", () => {
  cell.colSpan = cell.colSpan + 1;

  // Update the display
  output.textContent = cell.colSpan;
});

decreaseButton.addEventListener("click", () => {
  cell.colSpan = cell.colSpan - 1;

  // Update the display
  output.textContent = cell.colSpan;
});

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# dom-tdth-colspan

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
colSpan

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support

See also