Prevent text from overlap table td width

daniel picture daniel · Jan 8, 2011 · Viewed 78.8k times · Source

How can I restrict the table <td> entry to expanding over the entire screen when the entry is too long?

Answer

Phoenix picture Phoenix · Jan 8, 2011

Well, there's max-width, max-height, and overflow in CSS.

So

td.whatever
{
    max-width: 150px;
    max-height: 150px;
    overflow: hidden;
}

would restrict the maximum width and height to 150px, and it can be anything from less than 150 up to 150, and anything that doesn't fit inside that will be clipped off and hidden from view.

Overflow's default (overflow: visible;) is to simply allow anything that won't fit inside its specified container to just spill over outside of it. If you only want to limit it horizontally and don't want to hide anything, word-wrap may help:

td.whatever
{
    max-width: 150px;
    word-wrap: break-word;
}

word-wrap will break words whenever it needs to, even if it's not at the end of a word. You can also just use height and width to specify a fixed size if you don't want the table to expand or shrink at all.