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How to Make CSS Ellipsis Work on a Table Cell?
When dealing with long text in a table, ensuring that it doesn't overflow and ruin your layout is crucial, CSS provides solutions to add ellipses (...) to text that exceeds a cell's width, keeping your UI clean and readable, this article explores two approaches: using the display property and the table-layout property.
Approaches to Make CSS Ellipsis Work on a Table Cell
Using the display Property
The display property allows us to treat the table cell as a block or inline-block element, giving us more control over styling. This approach involves setting a fixed width for the cell, hiding overflow, and using the text-overflow: ellipsis property to display an ellipsis for truncated text.
Steps of the Approach
- Step 1: Change the element's display to block or inline-block, to treat the table cell as a block.
- Step 2: Set a fixed width for the cell.
- Step 3: Use text-overflow: ellipsis to ensure truncated text ends with an ellipsis.
- Step 4: Add overflow: hidden and white-space: nowrap; to manage the text's wrapping and visibility.
Example Code
In this example, table cell truncates text and displays an ellipsis for overflowed content.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Ellipsis Using CSS Display</title>
<style>
td {
display: block;
border: 2px solid #000;
width: 80px;
overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
white-space: nowrap;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>This is a long text that will be truncated</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Output

Using the table-layout Property
The table-layout: fixed; property sets a consistent layout for the table columns. By combining it with a fixed width for the table and table cells, we can control how text behaves when it exceeds the defined width, showing ellipses for truncated content.
Steps of the Approach
- Step 1: Apply table-layout: fixed; to the element.
- Step 2: Define a fixed width for the table and cells.
- Step 3: Use text-overflow: ellipsis, overflow: hidden, and white-space: nowrap; for the <td> elements to handle the overflow.
Example Code
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Ellipsis Using Table Layout</title>
<style>
table {
table-layout: fixed;
width: 100px;
}
td {
border: 2px solid #000;
width: 100px;
overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
white-space: nowrap;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>This is another long text example</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Output
