CSS empty-cells Property

The empty-cells property is used to set if the display borders and background should be shown or not on empty cells in a table.

This property applies to tables that have a border-collapse property value of "separate".

For border-collapse property the default value is "show".

Initial Value show
Applies to table-cell elements
Inherited Yes.
Animatable No
Version CSS2
DOM Syntax object.style.emptyCells = "hide";

Syntax

empty-cells: show | hide | initial | inherit;

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
    <style>
      .show {
      empty-cells: show;
      }
      .hide {
      empty-cells: hide;
      }
      td, th {
      border: 1px solid #1c87c9;
      padding: 0.5rem;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h2>Empty-cells property example</h2>
    <p>Here the "show" value is used: </p>
    <table class="show">
      <tr>
        <td>Moe</td>
        <td>Larry</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Curly</td>
        <td></td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <br>
    <p>In this table the "hide" value is used:</p>
    <table class="hide">
      <tr>
        <td>Moe</td>
        <td>Larry</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Curly</td>
        <td></td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>

Result

Let’s see another example illustrated with both "hide" and "show" values:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
    <style>
      .show {
      empty-cells: show;
      }
      .hide {
      empty-cells: hide;
      }
      body {
      background: #1c87c9;
      padding: 25px 0;
      color: #fff;
      font-size: 2em;
      text-align: center;
      }
      table {
      display: flex;
      justify-content: center;
      }
      td {
      background: #fff;
      border: 1px solid #8ebf42;
      padding: 10px 15px;
      color: green;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>The empty cells are shown</p>
    <table class="show">
      <tbody>
        <tr>
          <td>&diams;</td>
          <td></td>
          <td>&diams;</td>
          <td>&diams;</td>
        </tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <p>The empty cells are hidden</p>
    <table class="hide">
      <tbody>
        <tr>
          <td>&diams;</td>
          <td></td>
          <td>&diams;</td>
          <td>&diams;</td>
        </tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>

Result

Values

Value Description
show Means that the borders and background on empty cells will be shown. This the default value of this property.
hide Means that the borders and background on empty cells won't be shown.
initial Makes the property use its default value.
inherit Inherits the property from its parents element.

Browser support
1.0+ 12.0+ 1.0+ 1.2+ 4.0+

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