Selecting with the mouse

Press and hold Alt and click or drag to select table cells:

Press and hold Alt+Ctrl (⌥ ⌘ on a Mac) and click or drag to select columns:

Hold Shift in addition to extend the current selection, or Shift alone to extend it to the cell you click.

Selections add up — every click or drag joins what is already selected. Click a selected cell again with the same keys to take it back out: select a column with Alt+Ctrl, then Alt-click its header, and only that one cell is dropped.

Rows and whole tables have no modifier assigned out of the box — pick one in the options, use the capture mode, or select them from the context menu.

Capture mode

In the capture mode you select with a plain click or drag, without holding any keys. It is the comfortable way to work through a long page, and the only way to select on a page that uses Alt for something else.

Turn it on in the toolbar popup and choose what a click selects — cells, columns, rows or whole tables. The extension button then shows what is active:

• E — cells
• C — columns
• R — rows
• T — tables

The mode ends after you copy, unless you make it stay on in the options. To switch modes without opening the popup, assign keyboard shortcuts (see below).

Copying

The selection can be copied in three ways, and all of them use the same set of formats.

Ctrl C / ⌘ C, or Copy from the browser's Edit menu — copies in your default format.

The Copy row of the toolbar popup — one button per format.

Table… in the page context menu — Copy for the default format, Copy… to pick one.

Unless you pick another one on the options page, the default format is Table (styled).

Copy formats

Formats you never use can be switched off in the options, and they disappear from the popup and the menus.

The toolbar popup

Click in the toolbar to open it. It has three rows:

• Copy — one button per enabled format, active as soon as something is selected
• Find — Previous Table and Next Table scroll the page to a table and select it
• Capture — Off, Cells, Columns, Rows, Tables

At the bottom are the links to the options page and to the Chrome shortcut settings.

The page context menu

Right-click a page and open Table…

Select Row, Select Column, Select Table — select around the cell you clicked

Previous Table, Next Table — walk through the tables on the page

Copy and Copy… — copy the selection in the default format, or pick one

Infobox

The infobox displays how many numbers are selected, together with their sum, average, minimum and maximum. You can move it to any corner or turn it off in the options.

Keyboard shortcuts

Copytables comes with no shortcuts assigned. To set them up, open Keyboard shortcuts… from the popup — Chrome opens its own shortcut page — and assign keys to the actions you use:

• Copy to clipboard — copy the selection in the default format
• Capture cells, Capture columns, Capture rows, Capture tables, Turn off the capture
• Find previous table, Find next table

Options

The modifier keys, the capture behaviour, the formats, the infobox, the scrolling speed and the number format are all configured on the options page — Options… in the popup, or the extension entry in the Chrome extensions list.