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 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>

table {
  border-collapse: collapse;
}

th,
td,
table {
  border: 1px solid black;
}

button {
  margin: 1em 1em 1em 0;
}

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 += 1;

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

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

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