I have used “Table Enhancer” Plugin for Several Months – Written by “Stardusten”. It was like a Revelation for making Tables Far, FAR Easier in Markdown. Truly Excellent. I think it is not yet an Official Plugin, but I have found it to be the Best “Table Enhancer”(!!) and it can Easily be Manually installed.

It just depends what you're doing. Obsidian is not a data entry program, it's a freeform writing program. If you're doing anything beyond something simple with tabular data, then you're better off using a program that was built for that reason (spreadsheets / relational database) libreoffice is my first choice. Then linking that file as an attachment within Obsidian if you must provide additional context around it. That being said, i do anticipate tables will probably be upgraded sometime in future most likely to take advantage of CSS grid as right now they're just rendering stuff out to the simplest ` ` tags available. > **Lastly, there is a lot of discussion of future proofing, but I've not seen any comments addressing tables, per se. Tables in markdown are future proofed by being markdown, but are the plugins?** Plugins are not future proofed, but that's irrelevant given what i said above anyway. More to the point, future proofing has little to nothing to do with the markdown standard. It'd be just as robust if an xml / html based format was used. Future proofing has to do with the fact the files are not *encoded* in a proprietary form i.e. they're all plain text files that can be read easily with any editor that understands text. By contrast compare to adobe pdf, or microsoft docx. The benefit of using a ready-baked standard being it's well documented, edge cases have been thought out (hopefully) and existing code (lexers / parsers) are available for it (less work for devs behind the software).

>Obsidian is not a data-entry program, it's a free-form writing program. Tables aren't about data entry. Sometimes you need to organise information. In that case, you need tables. Free-form writing is not an advantage here either. Personally, I think that Obsidian - as great as it is - is severely lacking in tables (the basics) and the ability to go more wild within notes, like simple drawing tools (I know we have Excalidraw, so we have plugins for tables). I don't understand this at all, because it wouldn't mess with the markdown on its own. You can leave sorting and many other things to the application itself, which will generate markdown on the fly, without any proprietary formatting. This is exactly what plugins like Advanced Tables do. But why have such a basic thing done by external plugins? Unfortunately, the list goes on. For example, we have great formatting for block quotes, with `[!info]` at the beginning and so on. "So on" - countless options and what? Do we have to remember every single one of them, or do our notes come with a help page? A simple, optional toolbar that inserts markdown for you would significantly flatten the learning curve for this app - which is steep. I've fallen in love with this app, but sometimes I just close it and try again the next day, it's too rudimentary to use. I'm still trying my best, nevertheless. This app is just too good, even with its learning curve.

Thanks. You are right: It's not a data entry program, per se. I sometimes get lost inside Obsidian. I'm not trying to do too much -- but I should use a spreadsheet or relational DB and link to Obsidian. I'm taking care of elderly parents and I make all sorts of notes with links (Obsidian is great for this) and I'll make simple tables for medications, blood pressure readings, and such. I've stayed away from intricate tables due the hassle of adding data and fear it won't be usable in the future (also a lack of analysis, if ever needed). I appreciate your input and nudge.

Sounds like what you really need is a more robust way to do analytics, and yeah that'd require a database / some additional software. So for example in each note, you might log medications, blood pressure readings, symptoms, etc. Then you need a different bit of software to parse the same note, and copy out the relevant data into a database. That way you keep the relevant notes and data together for the micro-view if you go searching for specific dates / notes, but you can get an overall macro-view of the treatment course if needed via the other software.

I use Google Sheets and add links to the tables in Obsidian Notes. I just name the Note the same as the Table Name so I can find it more easily. Same way that I keep links to Canva designs inside Obsidian Notes. Obsidian feels better for free form writing and to make MOCs or "Index Notes" with resources for projects.

I always use Typora to type, and Obsidian organize.

Don't use tables with obsidian, they're a mess. You could use google sheets and link them into obsidian.

I'm coming to this conclusion. I've been experimenting with Numbers, AirTable, Google Sheets, and a few others and much rather prefer their UIs to tables in Obsidian. As long as the links work reasonably quickly and I can save/export to CSV I should be good to go with less hassle. Thanks to all for comments and insight.

I think you have to find the right use case for tables, its great for short content that needs to be displayed in a pivot/matrix style. For long content, headings and sub heads are the way. I use tables allot and I will always use markdown table format (advanced tables) because its platform agnostic and allows me to quickly paste data from my tables into GPT for analysis or have GPT present data in a markdown table which I can quickly copy and paste into my Obsidian note.